


Out Of Time

by TheMajesticLoki



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Artist Steve Rogers, Avengers Movie Night, Bisexuality, Buddhism, Catholicism, Christmas, Clint Barton is a Little Shit, Coming Out, Depression, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Foil characters, Found Family, Halloween, Harry Potter - Freeform, Holidays, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, LOTR, Les Miserables - Freeform, M/M, Matchmaker Natasha Romanov, New Years, Nightmares, Philosophy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prank Wars, Rocky Horror, Self Harm, Sexy Times, Slow Build, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Is A Virgin, Steve does scrapbooking, Steve draws, Team as Family, Thanksgiving, Thor Loves Pop-Tarts, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony doesn't need saving, Truth or Dare, bruce is so done with everything, discussion of religion, doctor who - Freeform, the avengers dress up for halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-07 20:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6823579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMajesticLoki/pseuds/TheMajesticLoki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since waking up in the 21st century, Steve Rogers has felt like a man out of his time. He longs for the past that he lost, while being haunted with the memories of losing it. Tony Stark also feels like a man out of his time, but in the opposite way; ever the futurist, he is more concerned with looking forward than looking back. Secretly, he longs to forget all the trauma he has seen. Perhaps together they can learn to live in the present.<br/>OR<br/>The fic where movie nights happen weekly, Clint is a lil shit, Prank Wars and Truth or Dare are things that happen, Natasha plays matchmaker, The Avengers dress up as characters from Rocky Horror for Halloween, and everyone gets the family they've been looking for at last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Legolas's Beautiful Soft Face

Steve's initial reaction had been to decline when Tony had offered him a place to stay at the newly renamed and repaired Avengers Tower. It wasn't that he didn't like the man; Tony had obviously shown that there was more to him than being a narcissistic jerk when he'd flown that nuke into space, but that didn't mean that Steve thought they would get along if they were actually living together. He just seemed too snarky and irritable for his liking. Besides, Steve thought it rather rude to take so much from someone he barely knew (or liked, for that matter) for free.

"Come on Cap. You'll have your own floor and everything--"

"Tony that's really not necessary," Steve sighed into the phone, confused as to why this man had so much money to spare.  

"Everyone else is already here."

Steve hesitated. Surely, if everyone else was there, it was expected of him to go? Especially since he was the team leader? He couldn't quite shake the feeling of freeloading, but the truth was that he was sick of living alone in his SHIELD assigned apartment. Perhaps being around the team would do him some good.

"Fine," he responded, giving in. "I'll be there first thing in the morning."

And that's how he came to be standing in the lobby of Avengers Tower with two duffle bags of stuff--literally all his belongings--on a hot day in late July. He was glad for the air conditioning, a definite improvement from the 40’s. He was less glad for the disembodied voice that scared the daylights out of him.

"Hello, you must be Captain Rogers," said the voice, and Steve jumped.

"Is.. Does Tony have someone living in his ceiling?" he asked, glancing up anxiously.

"Afraid not, Captain," replied the voice. Steve was sure he heard a laugh in it. "I'm Jarvis, an artificial intelligence that Mr. Stark built."

"You’re a...robot?" questioned Steve. What on Earth was an artificial intelligence? How does one manufacture intelligence artificially? No one told him anything.

"...a bit more complex than your average robot, but sure, let's call it that. I'm afraid Mr. Stark has just woken up. Allow me to show you to the common floor." An elevator door opened automatically to Steve’s left.

"I'm so sorry, I'd thought he'd be up by now," Steve explained, stepping into the elevator. It started moving by itself, Jarvis apparently taking him where he needed to go. "I told him first thing in the morning and it's nearly 11..."

"Yes, well. Mr. Stark's sleeping habits are, shall we say, less than satisfactory."

The doors opened and Steve stepped out to see a dishevelled Tony pouring whiskey into his coffee. He was wearing baggy pyjama bottoms, an ACDC t-shirt, and sunglasses. Sunglasses inside. Right. Okay.

"Morning Cap," Tony mumbled, downing half the cup in one go.

"Uh, hey Tony," greeted Steve. “You have a nice…house?” It seemed strange to Steve that yes, this enormous building was technically one person’s house, even though he was sharing it with several other people.

"Mm hm,” Tony agreed. “This is the common floor. Anyone can come here anytime and do whatever. Jarvis can take you to your private quarters, that are... Well, yours to do what you like with. Paint the walls red white and blue, sing the national anthem as loud as you want, I don't care. If you need anything, ask him. I'll be down in the lab if you need me for some reason. Which you shouldn't. Gotta run."

Tony stepped into the elevator holding an entire pot of coffee, and Steve was left standing there, dazed.

After a second, he asked Jarvis to show him to his private floor, where he spent the rest of the day unpacking and exploring his new living space. It was unnecessarily large and had everything Steve could have possibly needed, including a well-stocked fridge and more electronics than he knew what to do with.

It felt rather artificial somehow, as most things in this new time did. The place was plain and spotlessly clean to the point of it almost being suffocating; it lacked all personality, as if no one had ever lived there before. Probably, now that he thought about it, no one ever had.

Steve sat on his neatly made up bed and stared at the white-washed wall for a while, a feeling of numbness creeping over him. He put his head in his hands. He wanted to go home. Not here, not back to the SHIELD assigned apartment that was no better than this place, not back to the military. He wanted his own time period back, but more than that, his friends; they had always been home to him.

If he was being honest with himself, he was terribly, terribly lonely. He missed Bucky, and Peggy, and the Howling Commandos. He missed everyone that had been left in the 1940s. He was a man out of his time, placed in a future unlike anything he could have imagined.

New friends were hard for him to find in this century--especially since he didn’t exactly blend in because of the 70 years he’d skipped--but the alternative to looking like a complete idiot all the time was to tell people he was Captain America. If he did that, whoever he was talking to would be too starstruck to even care who Steve Rogers was, or even realize that he was a completely different person.

Perhaps here, with the team, it’d be different. Perhaps he would be able to find a home again. A family.

 _Enough moping, Rogers_ , he thought to himself, standing up. The room had grown dark around him without him noticing. He wandered back down to the common floor, where he found Natasha sharpening her knives on one of  the many sofas at the centre of the room.  

“Hey, Rogers,” she greeted as he walked in.

“Evening, Natasha,” he replied, crossing the room to sit down beside her.

“What are your thoughts on the place so far?” she asked, the knife she was working on glinting menacingly.

“Ah… it’s big,” answered Steve truthfully. “A bit emptier than I’d expected. Where is everyone?”

“Banner and Clint are around. Thor’s temporarily back in Asgard, Stark’s usually working.”

"Figures," Steve said with a smile. "He is a genius, I suppose he has to do something to keep that mind of his occupied."

"Trust me, you won't think he's a genius anymore after living here for a few days," Natasha snorted. "Last night he asked me how to cook a frozen meal from the grocery store."

"And how did that go?" Steve inquired, beginning to relax in spite of the deadly weapons flashing right next to him.

"I gave him wrong instructions since he was apparently too lazy to read the box. He burned it," she said easily, clearly not at all sorry for her actions. "He said it was for an experiment anyway, ended up ordering pizza."

 

The two of them grew unexpectedly closer over the next few weeks. Natasha disappeared mysteriously during the daytime—something to do with SHIELD, Steve assumed--but during the evenings she could usually be found in the living room on the common floor, or in the adjoined kitchen.

"Hey Rogers, can you cook?" She asked him one night.

"Some things," he replied, surveying the vast assortment of ingredients Tony kept the common kitchen stocked with. "I'm not familiar with a lot of the ingredients Tony has stashed around here though."

"Have you ever tried Kotlety?"

"I think I have, actually. It’s like Russian meatballs, right?”

"Yep. Wanna make some?”

They made some, and Steve ended up having more fun than he had had in a while. Even when he almost set the stove on fire.

"Golly, I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I'm not used to 21st century appliances yet."

Natasha glanced over at him, barely holding back a laugh. “Golly,” she mimicked in a barely audible whisper.

Other nights they just sat on the sofas reading, or sometimes making casual conversation as Steve drew and Natasha cleaned her guns or messed with some other thing that could kill someone in a second.

“It relaxes me,” she claimed when Steve pointed it out.

Clint joined them every once in a while, interrupting the normally quiet atmosphere with dirty jokes that Steve pretended to be appalled at. Everyone seemed to expect him to be, in spite of the fact that this sort of humour had been common in the army and he was very, very used to it.

They rarely saw Bruce or Tony, who seemed to prefer being alone or working in their labs to actually socializing with their housemates, but Steve didn’t mind. He was quite content with the developing friendship he had with Nat and Clint, even if it did nothing to stop sleepless nights spent thinking about everything that could have been.

Not to say that Nat and Clint weren’t great, but they had no idea what any of Steve’s experiences were like. Growing up in the Great Depression, World War II… it was just history to them, something to be read about and not remembered. The only people who did remember were impossibly old and had had time to adjust to the future that Steve had been unceremoniously thrust into. Some things were better now, but not everything. Some things were worse; much had been forgotten. And in spite of all the amazing things the future had to offer, Steve would give anything to go back.

If only he hadn’t been forced to put the plane down, if only he had died instead of being frozen. If only, if only, if only. He often fell into an uneasy sleep only to reawaken shivering with the memory of the ice and Peggy’s voice still ringing in his ears.

 

One morning, about a month after Steve moved in, he ran into Tony and Pepper bickering in the common kitchen. He was just about to go on his daily run, and shuffled awkwardly past them to fill up his water bottle in the sink.

“Tony, you have to go--”

“It’s a formality, Pepper, there’s no point in me being there,” Tony mumbled, eyes half shut, drinking coffee out of an “MIT Bitches” mug. He looked exhausted; there were dark circles under his eyes and he was leaning on the breakfast bar for support.

“What does it say to them about the company if you’re not even there?” sighed Pepper, exasperated.

“It says that ‘Tony Stark has better things to do than attend boring meetings,’” Tony retorted. “Jesus, Spangles, why are you up so early?”

“Um.. running?” Steve answered. Wonderful. He’d been trying to slip in and out unnoticed; now he was right in the middle of their little dispute.

“That is _ungodly_.” Tony rolled his eyes. “No one should be up this early. Including me.” He turned to glare at Pepper.

“Do you know what, I don’t even care,” Pepper fumed. “Don’t come, it’s your company, your loss.” She turned on her heel and walked out.

Steve glanced at Tony, his eyebrows raised. “That went well.”

Tony shrugged. “I’ve got stuff to do. I don’t have time to make myself presentable just to sit in an uncomfortable conference room for hours, nodding and fake smiling while they discuss things that I don’t give a damn about.”

“It is your company--”

“Actually, Pepper’s CEO,” Tony countered. “Therefore it’s her job to deal with the press conferences and the paperwork while I use my genius to invent shit. That’s kind of the point of me being a genius.”

“So you never have to interact with other people?” Steve inquired, eyebrows raised higher than before.

“Exactly.” Tony threw a wink at him before heading towards the elevator. “I don’t play well with others.” Really. Steve had not noticed.

“You could come spend time with me, Nat, and Clint in the evenings sometime,” Steve called after him, deciding to at least try to get along. “It’d be swell. We could watch a movie.”

Steve had fully expected Tony to either ignore him or laugh at the idea, but to his surprise, the genius turned. “That’s right, you have a lot of stuff to catch up on, don’t you?” Tony asked. “Yeah, well. Maybe, if only for the chance to force you to watch real movies, not that Russian bullshit that Romanoff likes.” And then he was gone.

 

“I can’t believe you’ve never seen Harry Potter,” groaned Tony. They were all gathered in the common living room for the first official Avengers movie night. “What, have you been living under a rock?”

“Under a lot of snow and ice, actually, but close enough,” responded Steve. He had been getting used to Tony’s endless teasing; it had bothered him at first, but after seeing him jeer at at everyone, even his apparent best friend Rhodey at one point over the past few days, Steve had realized that it was Tony’s way of being friendly. “What did you expect? That I would just come out of the ice magically knowing all these things that you expect me to know?”

“It’s _Harry. Potter_ ,” insisted Tony, as if that explained anything at all.

Steve shrugged, bewildered. Thor looked just as confused as he was, although that might have been because of the numerous Poptarts he was trying to toast.

“One at a time, Thor, honestly,” Nat told him, walking over to supervise.

“Tony’s just upset because he’s a nerd,” Clint explained, dropping out of one of the air vents.

“I knew there was a man living in your ceiling,” Steve muttered.

“Should we really start with Harry Potter though?” Bruce asked. “There are eight movies, and he hasn’t read the books…”

“Shut it Bruce, we’re watching Harry Potter,” Tony snapped. “Hell, we could even watch all of them tonight, it’d only take around 20 hours or so.”

“Some people actually have normal sleeping schedules, Stark,” argued Natasha.

“I’m up for it,” Steve said, to everyone’s surprise, including his own. Really, he just wanted an excuse to stay here with everyone rather than going up to his own floor to be alone with his thoughts.

“Steve, don’t be ridiculous--”

“Nuh, he agreed to it, no going back now,” interrupted Tony as Jarvis pulled up the first movie.

Everyone settled in around the TV, bowls of popcorn and drinks balanced haphazardly on the arms of sofas and people’s laps as the movie began.

“Stop humming the theme, Tony,” Clint whispered from his place beside Natasha. Tony leaned forward to stick out his tongue at him in retaliation.

“What’s a muggle?” Steve asked, unsure of how much the movie would explain and how much he was already expected to know.

“Hush, you’ll see soon enough,” Natasha answered.

It was nice, Steve decided. He still ached for what he had lost, but sitting here, squished between Tony and Natasha, watching a children’s movie about a boy wizard… it was easy to pretend he was happy. It was easy to pretend he had a family again.

“Golly! Do they really have three headed dogs?” he exclaimed.

“It’s CGI,” Tony told him.

“A what?” he asked. “Is that supposed to be a new breed, or…?”

“It means they did it on a computer,” Clint said, rolling his eyes. Natasha elbowed him in the ribs. “Ow!”

“What’d you think?” Tony asked him when the movie was over. Everyone else had scattered for a 5 minute break before the next one.

“I really liked it,” Steve said, opening his sketchbook to scribble down some of his favourite bits. _It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends_ , he wrote. “It wasn’t something I expected you to pick, though.”

“I am offended, Cap,” Tony gasped, placing a hand over his heart dramatically. “Harry Potter is one of the best things to ever happen to the world. Aside from me, of course.”

Steve rolled his eyes. He had never met someone so jokingly arrogant before. That’s what it was, he was starting to see: a joke. Maybe Tony wasn't half bad.

“What house do you think you’d be in?” Tony asked. “I’m in either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, can’t pick between them.”

“I don’t know,” Steve answered. “Is this a thing people do, pick which house they’d be in at an imaginary British wizard school?”

“Definitely,” Clint interrupted, walking up behind them with a soft drink in his hand. “For fucking nerds, that is.”

“I think Steve would be in Hufflepuff,” Nat announced.

“Yeah, just stick him in the leftover house,” Clint snorted. “Nice one, Nat.”

“Hufflepuffs aren’t leftovers!” argued Bruce.

“Aye, Hufflepuff sounds indeed mighty!” boomed Thor. “Loyalty and hard work are honourable traits in a warrior--”

The discussion continued as the next movie started until Nat threatened to castrate anyone who talked.

Bruce went off to bed at the end of the second movie, claiming that five hours of Harry Potter was enough for him for now. It was around 2am and Steve wasn’t tired yet, but he was getting that feeling you get in the middle of the night where everything seems a little more exciting, a little more magical, a little more real.

Thor started snoring just before dawn broke. Clint began getting restless and started throwing popcorn kernels at the TV, trying to see how many times he could hit Snape in the face, until Natasha glared at him and he stopped.

They took a break then, Clint having trouble sitting still and Tony not wanting him dead on his sofa because of Natasha.

Steve took the opportunity to go out on a nearby balcony, glad to stretch his legs and feel the cool morning air on his skin. He heard footsteps approaching and turned to see Tony. They stood there in silence for a few minutes, surveying the city below. While it was light enough to see clearly, everything was tinged with an early morning blue. Steve’s fingers itched to paint the scene. It seemed so tiny from up here, and calm; the city was as asleep as New York could ever be.

“Ready to go back in?” Tony asked, his eyes wandering over the skyline.

“Yeah,” Steve replied, breathing in deeply. And then for a split second, time was frozen and Steve was shocked by how peaceful he felt, standing here, with his teammate—possibly future friend?—in the still, silent moments before dawn, running on no sleep. Tony turned and went inside, and Steve followed.

“Two more to go,” Tony said at dinnertime. Bruce had rejoined them and Thor was awake. The movie marathon was taking longer than they expected when they allowed for food and bathroom breaks, and Steve was exhausted.

“The last two are the best, so you’d better stay awake.” Tony glared at Steve, having noticed how his eyelids were drooping.

Steve did, and he was glad. His heart broke during the Christmas Eve scene where Harry and Hermione found Harry’s parents’ graves, but not nearly as much as it did in the battle of Hogwarts.

“Tell me you’re not about to start bawling, Rogers,” Clint said as the camera panned over all the destruction, all the bodies. It seemed far, far too familiar to Steve. He hugged a pillow tightly for emotional support. He’d had no idea that mere pixels on a screen could make him feel so much.

He glanced over at Tony, expecting him to mock him as Clint had, but the man’s dark eyes were glued to the screen. Steve inched closer until he could feel Tony’s body heat against his side.

They finished up around 10pm. Clint, Natasha, and Bruce disappeared, presumably to their rooms, Thor went off in search of more food, and Tony announced he was going down to his lab.

“Seriously?” Steve asked, staring at him incredulously. “You’ve been up for…how many hours?”

“62 hours, Captain Rogers,” Jarvis supplied.

“Thanks for being a tattletale, J,” Tony muttered.

“You need to sleep,” Steve insisted. “That is in no way healthy, and operating dangerous equipment like this isn’t safe.”

Tony shrugged and walked out of the room with an air of irritability. Steve would have gone after him, but he doubted Tony would listen.

Steve sighed and collapsed onto the couch. He should probably go up to his room and sleep, but… it was so comfortable here…maybe he would just close his eyes for a few minutes…

 

Steve awoke the next morning when he fell off of the sofa, blankets tangled around his legs, still shaking from a nightmare. He couldn’t remember exactly what it had been about, only that it involved Bucky falling from the train and Lord Voldemort. It was a relief that no one was around; he would’ve died of embarrassment had anyone seen him gripped with terror like that. Or falling off the sofa like that.

He struggled to his feet and folded the blankets neatly, wondering what to do with them. Someone, probably Natasha, must have came in during the middle of the night and covered him up. The thought made Steve feel warm inside. His mind wandered back over the last day. Did this mean they were a family now? Maybe not yet, but they could be, with a little effort.

“Jarvis, where’s Tony?” Steve asked.

“Mr. Stark is currently asleep in his lab,” Jarvis told him. “I could wake him for you if--”

 “No, no,” Steve said quickly. “He needs his sleep, I was just wondering. Does he stay up that long often?”

“Generally, yes,” Jarvis responded. “Over the past month he has averaged five hours of sleep every two days.”

“That’s…really not good.” He would have to talk to Tony about that at some point. After all, what if they were called out for a mission and Tony was too tired to work properly? He could put the whole team at risk. “Thank you, Jarvis. Don’t tell him I asked about it, ok?”

“Of course, sir. I am only a tattletale when it comes to matters of Mr. Stark.”

Steve chuckled and went off to get ready for his morning run.

 

Steve didn’t see Tony at all for the next week, and he had begun to wonder if the man was angry with him for some reason. He’d thought they’d made progress on this whole making-the-Avengers-a-family thing, but apparently not.

But then it was Saturday, movie night, again and Tony appeared like it wasn’t at all weird that he’d been absent for a week. Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps Steve was overthinking it. After all, Tony was a grown man and he didn’t need to be kept track of 24/7.

“Lord of the Rings,” Clint decided.

“You literally only like those movies because of Legolas--” Tony began.

“You picked last week, Stark,” Nat pointed out. “Be glad he’s not choosing Brave.”

“Hey, Brave’s a good movie!” Clint shouted.

“Lord of the Rings?” asked Steve, eyes wide. “The books by Tolkien? They’re movies now?”

“Yes,” Natasha told him. “I suppose we could put up with Clint watching them for your sake, Steve, provided I get to choose the movie next time. And Tony, if you don’t stop looking at me like that, I will pick the entire Twilight Saga. Yes, I know it’s awful, but I will endure it just to punish you.”

Watching Lord of the Rings thrilled Steve; the books had been a favourite of his, and seeing the same story with this “CGI” stuff was spectacular. However, it _was_ kind of annoying that Clint made those weird moaning noises every time Legolas was onscreen.

“I swear to god, since you’re so sexually attracted to arrows, I will shove one up your ass if you don’t stop,” Tony muttered, taking a sip of his scotch in disgust. Since this was coming from Tony, and not Natasha, it did nothing to stop Clint. In fact, if anything, he moaned louder.

“Barton, quiet,” Steve said eventually.

“What, is our resident virgin uncomfortable?” Clint asked, snickering.

Steve opened his mouth and shut it again, feeling a blush rising up his face.

“Fear not, mighty Captain,” boomed Thor. “Having not yet conquered a maiden is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact--”

Thor was cut off by Tony howling with laughter beside him. “Not yet conquered a maiden,” he choked out.

“Well what would you call it?” Thor asked, seeming surprised that it was not a common Midgardian phrase.

“How about just ‘getting laid,’” Tony suggested. “Conquering a maiden just sounds so.. noble.” He stepped onto the coffee table and struck what Steve assumed was supposed to be a ‘noble’ pose. Mostly it just looked like he’d had too much to drink.

“Aye, it is a noble deed,” Thor agreed, still looking confused.

“Tony, sit down. Clint, stopping making those noises,” Natasha ordered. “We’re missing the movie.”

“Missing Legolas’s beautiful face,” whispered Clint, staring longingly at the screen. “His skin looks so soft…my precious baby angel…”

  
They finished the last movie early the next morning, and Tony immediately tried to bolt.

 “Hang on, I wanted to talk to you,” Steve called to Tony as everyone else cleared out of the room.

 “Ugh, Cap, what? I’ve got shit to do,” Tony groaned, rolling his eyes, though he paused.

“First of all, call me Steve,” he said. “Second, how much do you actually sleep?”

“I don’t know, enough, does it really matter--”

“Tony. What if we get called out on a mission and you’ve been up for several days straight?” Steve demanded, ignoring the way Tony was glaring at him. “You could put the whole team at risk.”

“I can handle myself, Rogers,” Tony insisted. “I’m a grown ass man, I’ll do what I want. The team will be fine.”

“Unless it’s not.”

Tony didn’t answer, he just grabbed a bottle of liquor from the kitchen and walked toward the elevator.

“You also drink a lot.”

“And that’s your problem why?” Tony snapped, not even bothering to turn his head.

“Because you being drunk during a mission could also put the team at risk,” Steve sighed. Tony didn’t answer. “I’m disappointed in you, Tony.”

The other man froze for a split second before stepping into the elevator as if he hadn’t heard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, finally a longer fanfiction from me!! I haven't actually written a real story for pleasure in like two years, so forgive me if the wording sounds a bit awkward. If you want more avengers stuff from me, you should check out my cosplay youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7SUTbq1ZEpdBbh6LzCTaCw  
> Basically I dress up as Tony Stark and make a fool of myself on camera, sometimes joined by the other Avengers. It's updated pretty regularly.


	2. Truth Or Dare

Rogers was really getting on his nerves. Who cared if he drank, who cared if he didn’t sleep? People weren’t supposed to care. And Steve didn’t care, really; he was only concerned about the team and all the ways Tony could fuck it up.

Steve’s words echoed in his head, mingling with those his father had once said. “Captain America would be disappointed in you, Tony.”

Fuck it. It didn’t matter. Tony would stay down in his workshop and do what he did best: drink, repress his feelings, and eventually pass out from exhaustion. It was fine. He was fine.

At the next movie night Tony avoided sitting next to Steve as Natasha forced them to watch her Russian war movie. The man was obviously a bit uncomfortable with all the bombs, and Tony felt a twinge of pity for him. Dammit, Stark. You hate him, remember? You want him to suffer. He made his escape quickly after the movie, not wanting another encounter like last time.

A few days later they got called out on a mission, something to do with doombots and a giant squid in Manhattan. Tony was exhausted, having gone around two days with no sleep, but he wasn’t drunk. Finally, here was his chance to prove to Captain America that he was a mature and responsible adult who was capable of pulling himself together when the team needed him to. The mission went fine, the doombots were destroyed, and the giant squid was sent back to wherever the hell it had come from. The poor thing had seemed kind of scared, actually.

“Good work out there team, get some rest,” ordered Steve after the mission was over. He glanced at Tony, who understood that the last part was meant for him. Tony kept himself up another day out of spite.

He passed out at around 72 hours without sleep, slumping over his worktable and not even caring that there was a screwdriver pressed against his face. Visions of wormholes flashed before his eyes, causing his heart to race and his head to spin. The damn nightmares were one reason why he put off sleeping for so long, but not the only one. If he was being honest, it was a way of punishing himself; as if  ignoring the needs of his body would somehow make up for all the wrongs he had done. He woke up a few hours later feeling sick as opposed to rested, and gagged into a nearby trashcan. Nothing came up. Hm. It was possible that he’d forgotten to eat lately. Pepper hadn't been there to remind him to.

Pepper, he thought dimly, as he stumbled over to the fridge in his workshop and grabbed some leftover takeout from that Chinese place that he liked. She had broken up with him shortly after the Battle of New York, claiming that it was too mentally draining to be in a relationship with a man who was constantly doing dumb shit like fighting aliens and flying nukes into space. She never knew if he was going to live or die, and while she would always care about him, she didn't want to let herself care anymore than she already did. So they had to break up. It was self preservation. Tony understood, and it was fine. He didn't deserve her anyway.

He poured himself a glass of whiskey and sat down to his lovely meal for one. The food was cold, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He finished the glass of whiskey before the food and poured himself another. Steve had said he drank a lot. Did he? Maybe he did, but he wasn't an alcoholic. If, for some reason, he ever wanted to stop, he would be able to. Besides, it was expected of him to drink now, which made it ok. It was part of his image; the public found his constantly being drunk on public occasions hilarious, and Tony played it up all he could, much like he was going to have to play up his not sleeping to Steve.

It was productive, he would tell Steve. By not sleeping, he was sacrificing the present to prepare the world with the technology of the future, which was all anyone did anyway. The future, that was what it was about. Perhaps it always would be. Perhaps that's the reason why the world kept turning, because of the hope for the future. And the self-destructiveness of his insomnia? He would convince Steve that it was a part of him, just a another weird little quirk of his that wasn't a problem and didn't need fixing, like the booze and the women.

They were all great ways of hurting yourself, really. Subtler than slitting your wrists or downing pills, because those things people noticed and cared about and worried over. But no one noticed or cared when Tony drank or stayed up for days on end, save for Steve, and even Steve wouldn't dig deep enough to realize it was Tony's personal method of self harm. His quiet self destruction, impossible to be a cry for attention since no one could hear it. (A silent cry maybe. A silent cry to the world that he wasn't ok.) He was fine. Steve would see that he was fine.

Tony stayed in the lab for much of the next week, leaving only when Jarvis informed him that Pepper was upstairs. It was true that she’d only wanted to bitch at him for missing yet another boring  meeting, but he’d wanted to see her. He felt like as they drifted apart he was becoming worse and worse, more and more disconnected from everything.

“Why don’t you sleep?” Steve asked him after Pepper left. The two had shared a meaningful glance before she’d gone, and now he was staring into his eyes with an uncomfortable intensity. Tony was vaguely suspicious that they’d been discussing him in his absence. “Really.”

“It’s productive Cap,” Tony sighed, as if Steve should know this. It was time to launch into his rehearsed explanation to get his teammate off his ass about this. “The human mind is more creative when sleep deprived--”

“We both know that’s not why you do it,” Steve said quietly, stepping closer. “Right? It’s for another reason. Nightmares, I’m guessing, or maybe because you like how self-destructive it is.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, why would I like--”

“Tony.” Steve was too close now, and Tony took a small step backwards, heart racing. This was not a conversation he wanted to have, not now, not ever. “What’s going on?”

Tony didn’t answer. He could feel his chest getting tighter, an anxiety attack starting. _You have to hit him where it hurts, Stark,_ he thought. _That’s the only way he’ll leave you alone._

“Tony,” urged Steve. “You know I can try to help you, if you let me.”

“Save me, you mean.” Tony snorted, trying to regain his carefree composure, though his hands were shaking badly.  “You think I’m some sort of damsel in distress and you can just come in with your shield and make it all better. News flash, Spangles: I don’t need saving. I’m just fucked up. I guess that disappoints you too, doesn’t it?”

He stumbled away from Steve, towards the elevator, trying to control his breathing.

“Stark, don’t you dare--” Steve started, but Tony was already gone.

 

On the next Avengers movie night it was Thor’s turn to pick, but having never seen any Midgardian movies aside from the one’s they’d watched together, he suggested they play a game Jane had told him about once.

“It is called Truth or Dare,” he told them. “I do not know what it is about, but she assured me I would soil myself with laughter.”

“Thanks for the mental image,” Tony muttered.

“Truth or Dare, seriously?” whined Clint. “What are we, in middle school?”

“You certainly are,” Nat replied, as they all settled themselves into a circle on the floor. She briefly explained the rules to Thor before starting the game.

“Truth or Dare?” she asked him.

“Dare, for I am a brave and fearless warrior!” he proclaimed, beaming.

“I dare you to put your hand over Clint’s mouth for the next 5 minutes so he can’t speak.”

Thor let out a hearty laugh. “That would be hilarious, Ms. Romanoff.” He was silent for a second. “…I am actually expected to do it, aren’t I?”

Natasha nodded, smirking at Clint, who glared back at her as Thor placed one meaty hand over his mouth.

“Man of Iron,” called Thor, “Truth or Dare?”

“Hell, dare,” Tony asked, grinning. “What can I say? I have no boundaries or problems with embarrassing myself in public.”

“I dare you to drink an entire bottle of mead while hopping on one foot.”

“I don’t have mead, but I do have vodka,” Tony responded, hopping up to get it, glad for the excuse to drink without Steve bitching at him.

“Thor, that’s not safe,” Steve said anyway, seeming disappointed that his team was encouraging Tony’s alcoholism.

“Alright, a half a bottle then.” Thor shrugged. “However much you feel is appropriate.”

Tony chugged about half before he stopped. “I am literally going to throw up,” he groaned.

“You did it to yourself, Stark,” Nat pointed out, filing her nails. It was obvious she did not care at all, provided that if Tony did vomit, it was not on her.

“Caaaaaap,” Tony said. The booze was going to his head and he wanted to make their leader squirm after how uncomfortable he’d been making him lately. “Truth or Dare?”

“I, uh…Dare?” Steve asked.  

“I dare you to tell me the truth: are you really a virgin?”

“I, uh…” Steve was blushing to the roots of his hair. Tony smiled widely at him. Oh, this was perfect.

“…Yesss?”

“Called it,” Clint shouted.

“Dammit, has it really been 5 minutes already?” Nat groaned.

“He licked my hand, so I stopped silencing him,” explained Thor.

“Clint, that’s nasty.”

“Tony, Truth or Dare?” Steve asked.

“Not fair, I just went,” Tony argued, half fearing what kind of retaliation Steve had in mind.

“Too bad, Truth or Dare?”

“…Dare.”

“I dare you to get eight hours of sleep tonight,” Steve told him.

“Listen, you star-spangled dickbag, Truth or Dare is supposed to be funny.” Tony rolled his eyes. “Fun-ny. Learn from my example. Bruce, my darling, Truth or Dare?”

“Dare? I guess? I mean everyone else is doing dare.” Bruce shrugged indifferently.

“I dare you to let Natasha do your makeup like a fairy princess.”

“Really, Stark?” Nat muttered. She got up to retrieve some makeup anyway, and when she was done with Bruce, he looked very beautiful indeed.

“Like a noble warrior,” Thor stated. Tony wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. Did Thor even know what sarcasm was?

“Clint,” Bruce said. “Truth or Dare?”

“What the hell, dare,” slurred Clint. He was working on the bottle of vodka that Tony hadn’t finished.

“I dare you to eat one of my habanero peppers I keep in the fridge,” Bruce told him.

“Oh fuck,” Clint muttered, swaying as he stood to retrieve the pepper. “Oh fuck. This is going to be bad.”

Natasha was smirking evilly at the horrified expression on his face as he held the pepper by the stem, as if it might bite him. “Go on,” she urged. “No spitting it out either.”

“I hate you all,” grumbled Clint, but he but the entire pepper in his mouth anyway and began chewing. Tears streamed down his face from the heat of it as the others snickered in the background.

“Nat, Truth or Dare?” he asked when he was done, wiping his eyes with a tissue Steve had handed him.

“Dare,” she replied confidently.

“Well fuck, now I gotta find something you won’t stab me for. Hm. I dare you to drag Tony around the room by his ankles. Make it as unpleasant for him as possible.”

“I will kill you Barton,” hissed Tony. “Although before I do, I’ll probably throw up.”

“Don’t you dare, Stark,” ordered Nat as she grabbed his ankles and dragged him across the room in a considerably more gentle way than she could have. She left him back in his spot with his limbs in a heap and his shirt riding up. He didn’t bother to move.

“Truth or Dare, Barton?” she asked, eyes glinting mischievously.

“Uh…Truth?” he said slowly, scared of what would happen if he said ‘Dare.’

“Did you take my fuzzy purple scarf for your nest that I know you have hiding in the air vents?”

“Shit. Yes. You’re going to kill me now, aren’t you?” asked Clint, reaching for the bottle of vodka again.

“Right now? No. After we’re done with the game? Probably.”

“Steve,” Clint asked. “Truth or Dare?”

“Dare,” Steve said.

“I’m so sorry about this, but these may be my last few minutes alive,” Clint explained. "Cover your abs in mayonnaise."

"That's...really wasteful Clint," Steve pointed out, but did it anyway, taking his shirt of in the process as not to get it messy.

"Who wants to lick it off?" asked Clint, smiling broadly.

"Literally no one," Bruce told him.

"I don't know, how about you, Barton? You're the one that told him to do it in the first place," Nat pointed out.

"Thor, Truth or Dare?" Steve asked tiredly. Mayo on your abs really wasn't that comfortable.

"Truth," boomed Thor. "But make it interesting."

"I don't know... what's the wildest thing you've ever done?"

"Hm... I have mated with a giantess before," Thor admitted.

Clint choked on the vodka he was drinking and Tony sat up so fast he knocked his head on the wall behind him.

"...I was not aware it was that big of a deal on Midgard," Thor told them upon viewing their expressions. "It is common in our culture to mate outside one's own species..."

"Didn't your brother fuck a horse?" Natasha asked evenly.

"Aye. He birthed Sleipnir, an 8 legged steed, by allowing himself to be conquered by Svaðilfari--"

"I am either waaayy too drunk or not drunk ‘nough," Tony slurred. "How ‘bout we call it a night?"

"I'm so glad you're taking your 8 hours of sleep dare seriously," commented Steve.

"Ah, fuck. I forgot about that," mumbled Tony.

"Like you're actually capable of working in such a state." Natasha rolled her eyes.

"Of course I--"

"Bed, Tony," ordered Steve. "Can you stand?"

"Yes." Tony made no effort to get up.

"...Are you going to stand?"

"'M standin' now," he replied.

"Sure you are," sighed Steve, helping him to his feet.

 

Tony woke up in his own bed the next morning with a massive hangover and no recollection of how he’d got there.

“Jarvis, dim the windows,” he groaned, wincing against the sunlight that was streaming into his room. Dammit, where were his sunglasses when he needed them?

“Of course, sir.”

Tony forced himself to sit up and noticed a note and a glass of what he assumed to be water on his night stand.

 _Tony,_ the note read. _In order to complete your dare you must sleep until at least 9am. I have been nice enough to provide you with a glass of water, since I’m sure you’re hungover._

_-Steve_

Tony a sip of the water and gagged. It was vodka. Steve was an evil little bastard. It was well past ten o’ clock, so Tony stumbled out of bed, surprised that he had even been out for so long. Usually a mixture of nightmares and anxiety attacks kept him awake, but on rare occasions where he was thoroughly exhausted and more than a little drunk, he was able to  get a normal night’s sleep.

“Morning Tony,” Steve greeted him when he wandered into the kitchen. “Sleep well?"

“I guess I must’ve,”  mumbled Tony. “Thanks for the ‘water,’ asshat.”

Steve only grinned cheekily at him. “What’s on your schedule for today?”

“I dunno,” he replied, not meeting his gaze. Cap was getting a bit too friendly for his liking. It was hard to hate the guy when he seemed genuinely interested in Tony’s wellbeing and good-humoured enough to play a trick on him. Of course, it was only for the good of the team. It wasn’t like Steve actually cared, Tony had to remind himself.

“Listen, I’ve really wanted to talk to you--”

"Captain America, here to save the day," muttered Tony. It was fine. He would hear Steve out, then hurt him enough that he stopped harassing him. "The star spangled man with a plan to stick his nose into matters that are none of his concern."

"Listen, Tony," sighed Steve, walking over to him. Tony grimaced and took a sip of his whiskey in disgust. "I understand you don't need a saviour. A hero. But you do need someone to lean on when you have to. A friend."

"I don't need anyone."

"Everyone needs someone. People they can rely on. A family, of sorts."

"Family?" Tony laughed bitterly. "Let me tell you something about family, Cap; family sucks. I know you were friends with my dad. I know you think great things about him. But the Howard that I knew was nothing like the one you did; he changed between your time and mine, and the one I knew was a drunk, miserable, son of a bitch."

"Like you?"  asked Steve, glancing at him meaningfully.

"Yes, like me,” Tony agreed, unconcerned. “But there's a difference between us. My father was selfish enough to have a child. He was distraught over your supposed ‘death’ for as long as I could remember, and he took all his frustrations over losing you out on me. He compared the two of us endlessly, and how could I compete with the great Captain America? You were perfect and you had his approval. I hated you. I still hate you, to a degree. He always told me that Captain America could be disappointed in me. And he was right. I’m not good enough for you, and I never will be.”

“I only said I was disappointed in you because I was trying to help you, Tony,” Steve argued. “I’m trying to do what’s best for you, best for the team--”

"Well don't!” Tony spat. “You’re treating me like a child, and you know what else I don’t need? A parent. You’re not my dad just because you knew him. You're not responsible for me just because you were his friend. I don’t need another Howard, especially not to remind me of all the ways that I fail at living up to your expectations.”

Steve was silent for a moment. "You're right. I'm sorry. I thought you could be reasoned with, but now I see that you can’t. You enjoy being miserable, and you have every right to do so. I won’t try to help you again."

And then he did something that neither of them could have seen coming: he walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trash sorry I just like them in pain and pissed off at each other. That's the only reason why I'm writing this fic.


	3. Rocky Horror

Tony was right. He was an adult--technically, he had more years of experience at living than Steve did--and he had managed to keep himself alive and relatively healthy thus far by himself. Steve stubbornly vowed to himself not to interfere again.

It killed him to do so, really, when he saw Tony downing large amounts of alcohol in plain view of where Steve was sitting. It was definitely intentional, judging from the self-satisfied smirk Tony gave him when Steve didn't say anything. 

Why wouldn’t he just understand that Steve _cared_ about him? The man was impossible.

The two of them began bickering endlessly whenever they were in the same room together. If Bruce happened to be there at the time, he would always excuse himself, claiming it was bad for the other guy to be around that sort of tension.

"God, Cap, you are such a fucking goody two shoes!" Tony would shout at him whenever he made a comment about something being inappropriate or dangerous. "Why can't you loosen up? Jesus fucking Christ."

"Tony, please, that language is not necessary--"

"I am literally going to punch you in the stomach!"

"Have fun breaking your hand."

The two of them began purposefully getting on each others nerves more and more, until their feud had escalated into a full scale prank war.

"I hope Tony likes hot sauce in his scotch," murmured Steve, pouring in an entire bottle of the stuff. Natasha stared on passively, not bothering to stop him.

The next time Tony took a sip of scotch he shouted a string of curses at Steve and vowed to get him back for it.

Steve had laughed at the time, but the next day his shield was covered in Lisa Frank stickers that took him two hours to scrape off completely.

"Clint, can you hide this carton of rotten eggs in the air vent near Tony's lab? Thanks." Later on, while listening to Tony complain about the smell and wonder where it was coming from, he couldn't help but smile.

"You did this," Tony spat. "I don't know how you did this, but you did. Fuck you."

Steve's hair was shockingly pink the next morning; Tony must have sprayed it with some sort of coloring product in the night.

"Oops, I'm sorry, Stark," he said when Tony found he could not remove the coffee pot from the machine. "I may have accidentally superglued that there. By mistake, of course."

His phone started going off endlessly after that, as Tony had given his number out to a group of teenage girls.

"Steve..." Natasha asked slowly. "Why is your ringtone the Nyan Cat song?"

"Tony," he sighed. "I can't figure out how to change it, I think he did something so I couldn't..."

Soon hearing the song so often began to drive Steve crazy, so he took his phone and jammed it down the garbage disposal, causing Tony to have to spend a great deal of time trying to unclog the sink.

"Alright, Cap?" asked Tony when Steve walked out of the bathroom one evening.

"Tony."

"Yes?"

"Why is Thor's hammer on the toilet seat?"

"...I may have convinced him to put it there."

"Come on, I need to pee," begged Steve.

"Sorry, sometimes these things just happen." Tony shrugged and turned his attention back to his tablet.

Steve sighed and headed for the elevator, intending to use the bathroom on his own floor. Nothing happened when he pushed the button.

"Oh yeah, elevators are temporarily out of service," explained Tony.

"What? Why?!"

Tony pursed his lips. "Maintenance."

Steve ended up having to piss in the sink. Seeking to retaliate, he got Jarvis to let him into Tony's lab, where he spilled 30 gallons of marbles that he'd bought on the internet with Tony's credit card.

And that was how Bruce accidentally ended up getting covered in a bucket full of maple syrup that Tony had rigged to spill when someone opened the refrigerator.

"Brucie, I am so sorry, that was meant for Steve--"

"This prank war ends," growled Bruce, his eyes glinting green as maple syrup dripped from his hair. " _Now_."

 

“So what do you wanna do for movie night tomorrow? It is your turn to pick,” Natasha reminded him one evening. The prank war was over now and things had been pretty quiet around the tower lately. Tony had resorted to sticking his tongue out at Steve whenever they saw each other, but for the most part they were pretty civil.

“I dunno,” Steve admitted. He honestly had no idea, but he had to pick something. Otherwise his turn would be skipped and it would go back to Tony, and that wouldn’t do, considering they had this whole frenemies thing going on between them now. “What other books have they made into movies?”

“Hm. Les mis, if you’ve read that,” replied Natasha.

“I have.” He had, once, before the war. He’d thought it rather long and tedious to read, but he had finished it and loved it all the same. “Thanks Nat, that’s actually a good idea.”

 

“Les mis, are you kidding me?” Clint whined. “It’s two and a half hours long.”

“Lord of the Rings was nearly ten,” Steve shot back.

“Yes, but Lord of the Rings is _interesting_.” Clint made a face. “This is a _musical.”_

Steve hadn’t known that, actually. They’d had musicals in his day, of course, but he’d never spared the money to go and see one. Still, it was fine. It’d be a new experience for him, was all.

“It’s about _history_ ,” whined Tony, joining in on Clint’s protest. “History is _boring_.”

“I have some stories about World War II that are the opposite of boring,” Steve told him. “Everyone stop arguing, we’re watching it.”

It turned out that Steve really, really liked musicals. The songs were unlike anything Steve had heard before; they complemented the story so well, and seemed to fill his very being with music, making him feel so _alive_. He hoped the team was prepared for him singing the entire soundtrack in the shower, loudly enough for all of them to hear it.

“That was so stupid,” Tony said after Enjolras and Grantaire died and Marius was singing about his survivor’s guilt. “It was all for nothing. They failed. They didn’t change anything. No one cared, no one even noticed.”

“You’re right, they didn’t change anything,” Steve agreed, standing up. The team looked at him. “But they believed that they _could_. They had grand plans to change the world, and they truly believed that they could do it. They gave it literally _everything_ they had in the hopes that they would obtain _freedom_ and _justice_. And that perseverance is what makes it so, so important.”

“Aye, ‘twas noble of them to give their lives for what they truly believed in,” agreed Thor, smiling. “They were true warriors.”

“That’s why we fight battles that it seems like we’re going to lose,” Bruce added. “That’s why we keep going when things seem hopeless--”

“Because in that moment, when the future is uncertain, all you have is the present and what you do with it,” Natasha cut in. “Yes, ‘they talked of revolution. Here it was, they lit the flame. Here they sang about tomorrow. But tomorrow never came.’ It doesn’t matter that they failed, it matters that they fought for it.”

 “Fighting for tomorrow, huh?” Tony asked, rising to stand beside Steve. “I can get behind you on that one. Hope for the future is the strongest motivator I’ve ever come across, even if your hopes end up not coming true. We have to believe that we can be better, that we can make the world better; that’s the only way it’s ever going to happen.”

Steve met his eyes to find Tony staring back determinedly, a corner of his mouth twitching up.

 “To the future,” Tony said, raising his glass while maintaining eye contact with Steve.

“To the future,” agreed Steve, smiling and raising his own.

“To the future,” the rest of them chorused.

While lying in bed that night, Steve tried to believe his own words. He had once had faith in the future, until he’d gotten stuck in it. Now that he was here, the past seemed safer; it wasn’t at all perfect, but it was familiar. But Tony had a point; the future was what they were fighting for. He fell asleep still yearning for things long gone, yet at the same time, confident in the hope of humanity.

As the weeks passed, and summer turned into fall, Steve began paying more attention to Tony Stark. Not his drinking problem or his unhealthy sleeping habits, but his ideas. The things that came out of the man’s mouth radiated hope even though the man himself seemed hopeless.

“You’re brilliant,” Steve told him one day as he was ranting about a new invention he was working on. Most of the technical stuff was lost on Steve, but he understood the general idea. “I would have never even considered something like that.”

“I’m sorry Cap, we’re supposed to hate each other,” teased Tony. “Stop flattering me.”

Steve blushed. Tony had already turned away and did not see it, something he was extremely grateful for. The thing was, while Tony got on his nerves to no end, he really didn’t hate him. In fact, he was starting to feel twinges of…something else. He shoved them down, too terrified to even process his emotions, but the truth was, he was kind of developing a crush on the genius.

 _Don’t think about it Rogers,_ he told himself. _Don’t even entertain the idea_. And so he didn’t; he went on exactly the same as before, all affection for Tony repressed until he could barely notice it was there.

 

On the last Saturday before Halloween, Tony picked something called Rocky Horror Picture Show for them to watch.

“You can’t let Steve see that, Stark!” Clint gasped dramatically as the movie started. “It’s not appropriate for his poor little virgin eyes.”

“Science fiction,” sang Tony, ignoring him. “Double feature…”

“…Should I be scared?” Steve asked nervously.

“Not at all, Cap.” Tony winked at him, eyes glinting mischievously. Steve had a feeling that they were watching this movie for the sole purpose of making him blush. He sighed.

“…Forbidden planet,” Tony and Bruce sang, dancing around the room. “At the late night…double feature…picture show…I wanna go…”

“To the late night… double feature…picture show,” Clint joined in.

“Has everyone seen this?” Steve questioned.

“Pretty much,” replied Natasha. “It’s just one of those things.”

 “What…is going on…” murmured Steve, as the party scene started. “This movie is really weird.”

“It was the 70’s.” Tony shrugged, as if that explained everything.

“Oh my god!” exclaimed Steve, stunned, as Doctor Frank N Furter disrobed to reveal his corset and fishnets.

“See, I told you, you can’t show him this stuff,” interjected Clint. “They didn’t have sweet transvestites in the 40’s.”

Clint wasn’t entirely correct on that one; they’d had queer people in Steve’s time, but they had been more secretive, certainly not prancing around on film dressed like…that. They could have been killed.  

At the end of the movie Steve was sitting on the sofa with his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open in shock. He had heard about homosexuality and transgenderism becoming more accepted as time progressed, but he wasn’t sure that this movie was an accurate depiction of what “accepted” looked like. True, it was scandalous by 40’s standards, but Steve had a sneaking suspicion that it was just for shock value. Was this what people meant when they talked about acceptance in society? That queerness was acceptable for TV? Or was it really, truly acceptable for anyone? He wasn’t sure, and decided to keep silent on it.

“So, I was thinking,” began Tony, smiling impishly.

“This can’t be good,” groaned Bruce.

“We should totally dress up as characters from Rocky Horror for Halloween.”

“Hell no.”

“What are you thinking, Stark?”

“Absolutely NOT.”

“Come on guys,” whined Tony. “It would be fun, we could go to a club, get wasted…”

“Who would we even be?” asked Bruce. Of all the people Steve would have expected to entertain Tony’s idea, it was not Bruce. Well, you learn something new every day.

“I would be Frank N Furter, obviously,” Tony purred, batting his eyelashes.

“Yeah, and Steve could be Rocky,” snorted Clint. “Fat chance of getting him to agree to that.”

“Yeah, sorry, there’s no way I’m wearing nothing but gold underpants out in public,” agreed Steve, shaking himself out of his reverie. “Besides, I can’t even get drunk.”

“We could be Riff Raff and Magenta, Clint,” suggested Natasha, ignoring him.

“You’re kidding.” Clint stared at her incredulously. “You actually think this is a good idea?”

“Absolutely not, but it would be hilarious,” she replied, raising an eyebrow at him.

“I’m up for being Colombia, if we’re actually going through with this,” offered Bruce. “What can I say, I look good in a top hat, even if it’s sparkly.”

“Thor?”

“I have no desire to dress in such garments,” boomed Thor. “Even for comedic purposes.”

“That settles it. It’s a no go.”

“You could be Eddy, he doesn’t wear anything too horrendous.”

“Aye, Eddy would be acceptable,” Thor conceded. Everyone turned to look at Steve.

“I told you. I’m not dressing up in gold underpants,” argued Steve. Everyone was silent, still staring at him expectantly. Tony waggled his eyebrows at him, smirking. “Ugh. Fine.”

“Yes!” Tony shouted, jumping up. He had a manic expression in his eyes. “This is going to be so awesome!”

“I’m going to regret this so much,” muttered Steve.

 

This was, possibly, the worst decision Steve had ever made. He didn’t even want to know where Tony had found most of the costume supplies.

“I mean, I don’t even look like Rocky,” Steve ranted to Nat. His arms were crossed over his bare chest and the gold underpants were making him feel ridiculous. “I’m not tan, I’m Irish. That makes me about the shade of a sheet of paper.”

“You look fine, Steve.” Nat rolled her eyes. Her hair was curled and she was wearing a maid costume that was thankfully less revealing than Steve had imagined. “Just be glad you’re not Bruce. Do you think he looks like Colombia? At all?”

Bruce, in spite of his corset, mini shorts, and top hat, did not look like Colombia. Thor didn’t look like Eddy either, with his blonde locks; he looked rather like the human version of an overexcited golden retriever dressed as a member of a biker gang.

“This is horrible,” grumbled Clint. He was dressed in the silver space costume from the end of the movie. Originally he’d tried to wear a suit, but Natasha had told him no one would know who he was since it looked so normal. “Hey Rogers, take a selfie with me.”

“What’s a selfie?” asked Steve as Clint shifted closer to him.

“It’s a picture of yourself. Watch.” Clint held his phone up in front of them and Steve could see his own face on the screen. “Smile! Great.”

“What are you gonna do with the picture?” questioned Steve, a bit uneasy with Clint having a picture of them dressed like this to do what he pleased with.

“I dunno. Keep it to look back on it later and laugh about how ridiculous we look,” replied Clint. “Ah, the memories.”

“So it’s like drawing?”

“What?”

“Drawing. I draw to capture moments that I want to remember later,” Steve explained. “Call me sentimental, but that’s what I do.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Clint shrugged. “I was kind of joking when I said that, I can’t imagine why we would want to remember this. It’ll probably be a disaster.”

“Are we ready, team?” asked Tony, appearing in an outrageous getup consisting of a bikini, a corset, and a cape. And who on Earth had taught him to do makeup like that?

“As we’ll ever be,” Steve sighed. He felt vaguely as if he’d entered another world, one where reality was a bit off and everyone was a bit more creepy, perverted, and unpredictable than usual. Ah well, what else was Halloween if not that?

 

Tony had found a club they could go to that was doing some sort of Halloween event. They sauntered in around 11pm, and Steve became increasingly aware of people staring as the night went on.

“Hey, do I know you?” asked the bartender. “You look kind of familiar.”

“Nope, definitely not,” Steve told him, hurrying away as fast as possible.

He ended up finding a corner from which to watch Tony and Clint drink and make fools of themselves as Thor and Bruce tried to avoid looking like they were part of the same group, though it was obvious from the outfits. His eyes wandered over Tony, taking in the way his skimpy clothing accented his body. He was beautiful, truly, with those dark eyes gleaming in the dim lighting and that stupid little smirk he wore making an appearance as Bruce tried to drag him away from the uninterested girl he’d been trying to flirt with. The heels were surprisingly easy for him to manage; he swung his hips sassily when he walked and struck overly flamboyant poses at every opportunity. More and more, Steve’s eyes were drawn to his ass, the bikini he was wearing leaving little to the imagination. Each time he had to remind himself to stop looking at it; getting an erection while dressed like this would be extremely obvious to anyone who saw him.

“You’re staring,” whispered Nat, coming up behind him.

“Golly, Nat!” he yelped, feeling a blush rising up his face. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

Nat sat down next to him, a strangely coloured drink in her hand. “You like him.” She nodded at Tony, who was throwing some sort of tantrum at Bruce.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” stammered Steve, fidgeting nervously. “I’m not..I’m not a homosexual.”

“I know you’re not, Steve,” she replied evenly. “You’re obviously bi.”

“Bi…?” he ventured.

“Bisexual? Interested in more than one gender?” she took a sip of her drink, maintaining eye contact with him pointedly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted, looking away.

“Look at me, Steve.” He couldn’t.

“It’s fine you know,” Natasha told him. “I mean, it’s okay now. It’s pretty well accepted, especially in New York City. Look at half these people, do they look straight to you?”

“It’s Halloween,” Steve pointed out. “No one looks straight.”

“…True. But trust me, it’s fine. No one would think any less of you if you came out as bi.”

Steve didn’t answer. Nat sighed.

“Go dance with him,” she urged. “Come on, he’s drunk, it’s Halloween, just focus on having a good time for once in your life.”

“I’m not gonna--”

“You’re gonna dance with him, Rogers,” hissed Nat menacingly. “You will. Go.”

She pushed Steve towards the dance floor, where Tony immediately stumbled to his side.

“Rockyyy,” he slurred. “I’s wondering where you were. Dance with me, it’s Halloween.”

“I don’t know how to dance,” said Steve, anxiously glancing around to see who was near them. No one seemed to care.  

“It’s easy, just flail your limbs like a drunk person.” Tony attempted to demonstrate and would have fallen over had Steve not caught him around the waist. They started swaying like that, Steve still blushing furiously, though it wasn’t noticeable under the colourful lights. Tony was even more beautiful up close, he decided, with those long eyelashes and sharp cheekbones. And his _eyes_ , god, they were so dark and lovely--this was bad. This was so, so bad; he was falling for this man.

Steve sighed, then forced himself to stop worrying and just focus on having a good time, like Nat had said. And this, dancing in a club on Halloween while wearing nothing but gold underpants with a drunk genius in his arms, was somehow his definition of a good time. He could have asked for nothing else.

“Tony,” he said suddenly. “Take a selfie with me.”

“Who the hell taught you how to take selfies?” laughed Tony. He smiled for the camera anyway, and Steve knew that he would keep this picture forever.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of Clint trying unsuccessfully to get Steve and Thor intoxicated and Tony doing silly things to make the rest of them laugh and Nat glancing at him knowingly whenever she caught him staring at Tony. It was good.

 It didn’t seem quite real the next morning, Steve thought, as he lay in bed with the early morning sunshine streaming over him. But God, he was so happy. For the first time since coming out of the ice, he realized, he’d gone an entire night without wishing for the past.

 

Steve was freshly showered after his morning run one day when Tony stomped into the common living room. It was a strange thing to see him outside his lab at this time of day, but Steve was glad of his company.

“Everything alright?” he asked from the kitchen, where he was making brunch.

“Damn security protocols kicked me out of the lab,” grumbled Tony. “There was a gas leak, but it’s _fine._ It’s not dangerous at all, but it still won’t let me back in for another 24 hours.”

“Want an omelette?”

“Sure,” sighed Tony, obviously still frustrated at the lab situation. He took out a tablet and began swiping at it, barely noticing when Steve set a plate down beside him.

“What are you working on?” he inquired, sitting down across from him with his own omelette.

“New designs for Clint’s arrows,” responded Tony, not looking up. “It’d be easier in the lab, where I could actually test it, but I suppose I can work from here.”

He seemed so determinedly focused like this that Steve wasn’t even annoyed that the omelette he’d made was getting cold. The expression on Tony’s face was interesting, and Steve kind of wanted to draw it. There was no way Stark would stand for that though, so he did the next best thing; he took a picture.

“What did you just do?” Tony asked, glancing at him. “Did you just take a picture of me?”

“Maybe.”

“Why would you do that, I’m working.”

Steve shrugged. “Why won’t you eat the omelette I made you?” Okay, so maybe he was a bit annoyed about it.

Tony sighed, reaching for the food. “No more taking pictures of me when I’m not expecting it.”

Steve was silent, causing Tony to pause.

“Got it, Rogers?”

“Mm hm.”

That was not the last time Steve took a picture of him. He did it whenever he saw a moment that he thought he might want to remember later; basically any moment where Tony was looking especially beautiful and unlikely to notice. He did notice, of course, more often than not, but never seemed really bothered by it. He would huff and roll his eyes before going back to what he was doing, and Steve would happily print out the pictures later and tape them in his sketchbook, which was becoming more and more like a scrapbook. He began doing it with the team, too; whenever things were going well, whenever they were happy.

 Steve couldn’t help it, really. He cherished what few drawings he’d done before the ice that he’d been able to find in museums and on the internet, but he constantly wished he’d done more. More of Bucky and Peggy, in particular; he wished he’d captured more moments with them, but he hadn’t. He wouldn’t make than mistake again with the family he had now.

They, too, would die someday. Everyone dies. Steve thought about it constantly; it was a pesky little thought in the back of his mind whenever the depression let him breathe long enough to feel happy. He could be laughing with the team one moment and then remember how someday they’d all be gone. There was nothing he could do about it, so he just kept capturing moments with the hope of avoiding the inevitable.

During the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, Tony was mysteriously absent. He was never in the common kitchen and even started to miss movie night. Steve knew he had promised to ease up on bugging the man about his schedule, but they had gotten so close lately and Steve was starting to worry.

After Tony missed his second movie night in a row, Steve decided to go down to the lab and see what was going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the new version of Les Mis didn't come out until December 2012, a few months after this took place, but shh. Just ignore it. Time doesn't exist.


	4. Tony Can't Cook

“Captain Rogers is currently on his way down to the lab,” Jarvis informed Tony.

Tony couldn’t bring himself to move. He was slumped against his worktable, the majority of his body on the cold, hard floor, with several empty booze bottles beside him. Some of them had been smashed into pieces by his fist. He was bleeding rather badly from it, and had not slept or eaten in several days. If he was being honest with himself, he was having a bit of a mental breakdown, but he was fine. He had to make Steve believe that he was fine.

“Tell him I’m fine,” he choked out. “Don’t let him in.”

“I’m afraid that request is being overridden by my security protocols,” Jarvis told him. “I find it necessary to allow Captain Rogers to enter for the sake of your physical health.”

“Jarvis, do not--”

“Tony?” Steve was at the door. Shit. Tony, feeling as though he couldn’t breathe, didn’t answer. “I’m coming in.”

He heard the door open and Steve’s footsteps approaching. They stopped a few feet away, but Tony refused to look up. Maybe, if he just avoided eye contact, Cap would realize that he didn’t actually want to deal with the ruined genius lying at his feet. Steve breathed in sharply and Tony could feel the disappointment radiating off him, already knew all the ways he was about to rant and rave.

To his surprise, Cap just nudged the broken glass away with his foot and sat down beside him.

“Leave,” Tony ordered through clenched teeth, unable to take it anymore. “I don't need your disapproval, and I don't need your help."

".....May I?" Steve asked, motioning to his bleeding fists. Tony clamped his mouth shut, not trusting himself to be able to speak without screaming, or crying, or both. Steve, apparently taking this for permission, gently lifted Tony’s hands in his own to inspect the damage.

“Is there a first aid kit in here, Jarvis?”

“Drawer to your left.”

Steve began cleaning the gashes with a tenderness that Tony hadn’t known he possessed. He glanced up at his face briefly, taking in the furrowed brow and the worried blue eyes. _Oh Steve. I’m so sorry,_ he wanted to say. _I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done, I’m sorry for being me, because who I am is shitty and messed up…_

“I’m fine,” he said instead, trying to swallow the lump in his throat.

“You’re not fine. Can you stand?” Steve asked him, then looked around nervously. “You didn’t…take anything…did you?”

“I… no. I didn’t try to kill myself, if that’s what you’re asking,” replied Tony in a hoarse whisper. “I wouldn’t… I’m not suicidal.”

“I know,” Steve told him, though Tony knew that’s exactly what he’d been thinking. “You haven’t lost hope yet, Stark. I can see that in your work.” 

“I’m sorry, Cap,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry, I just kept getting worse and worse and I couldn’t find the willpower to go upstairs, so I just…” His own sobs cut him off. Fuck, fuck, fuck, this could not be happening, he wasn’t going to break down in front of Captain America. He had walls, dammit. They needed to stay up.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Steve murmured, reaching out to take him in his arms. Tony let him, pressing his head against the super soldier’s chest as Steve shifted until he was sitting in his lap.

They stayed like that for ages, Tony shaking silently, tears streaming down his face, and Steve whispering soothing things to him, running his hands over his back and through his hair comfortingly.

“You know I care about you,” Steve said quietly. “That’s why I worry.”

“You care about the team,” sniffled Tony.

“The team is nothing without individuals,” Steve told him as Tony pressed his face into his neck, hiding from his gaze. “When it gets down to it, the ‘team’ you think of is nothing more than an idea to be presented to the public; it shows nothing of the people behind the label. You are infinitely more important to me.”

Tony didn’t reply, only clung to him tighter.

“You know what else is an idea, don’t you?” he questioned, letting his face rest against the top of Tony’s head. “Captain America. The person your father told you that I was has nothing to do with me, Tony. I’m not…I’m not here to tell you that I’m disappointed in you. I care about you, truly, which is something I’m guessing Howard never really did.”

 “Steve,” whispered Tony, using the man’s real name for what might’ve been the first time. “Thank you.”

They stayed sitting like that until Tony’s eyes dried and his ragged breathing slowed to a normal rate.

“How about getting some rest?” suggested Steve.

Tony nodded against him, and Steve stood up, still holding him in his arms. By the time Steve had carried him to his room, he was almost asleep. The soldier set him down on the bed as carefully as he could and draped the blankets over him. Tony half wanted him to stay, to lay down beside him and hold him as he slept, but that would’ve been enormously inappropriate. He settled for letting Steve smooth out his hair once more before he turned off the lights and disappeared out the door.

Tony woke up late the next morning tremendously disoriented. How had he gotten here? Why were his hands bandaged? And then he remembered. He’d broken down. In front of Cap. Oh, no, fuck, this was _not_ good.

He sat up, panic rising in his chest, wondering what he should do. Act like it’d never happened? Be more of a dick to Steve to push him away? Allow himself to open up to him since that was what he secretly ached to do, but risk getting hurt in the process? He couldn’t decide.

However, when Steve walked in as he was eating his breakfast, he instantly made up his mind. The way the man _looked_ at him, god, his eyes filled with all of the pureness and goodness and caring in the world…it was enough to tear down his walls permanently.

“How are you feeling?” asked Steve, coming over to sit down beside him, close enough to make Tony was hyperaware of the short distance between them. What the fuck was happening? This was _Cap_. America’s golden boy, the straightest man alive; Tony shouldn’t want to be leaning in to feel the warmth of his body against his skin.

“I’m okay,” he answered, sipping his coffee and trying to ignore the urge to move even closer to the man.

“That’s good.” For a second Tony thought he was going to pull him into a hug, but Steve just reached over and gripped his shoulder for a second before walking past him, the warmth of his touch still lingering.

 

“So. What are we doing for Thanksgiving?” Steve asked the team one Saturday night, in between episodes of Doctor Who.

“I have no knowledge of this ‘Thanksgiving,’” boomed Thor.

“It’s an American holiday,” Natasha explained. “They celebrate it this Thursday.”

“It’s Annual Eat Turkey and Get Drunk Day,” Tony proclaimed, taking a swig of whiskey.

“It’s the day we make a point to appreciate what we have,” corrected Steve, glancing at Tony pointedly. He stuck his tongue out at him in response. “Count your blessings, acknowledge what your thankful for, etcetera, because one day you might not have it anymore.”

“And here we have Steve Rogers, the optimist,” murmured Bruce, raising an eyebrow at Steve.

“It’s a feast, Thor,” asserted Clint.

“A feast!” exclaimed Thor, instantly excited. “Well why did you not just say? I love feasts! It shall be grand; we shall have the finest of meats and wines and make jest long into the night!”

“Well, I guess that answers my question.”

 

“Steve, I can’t cook,” Tony insisted as Steve tugged him into the kitchen that Thursday. “I know you think making food for Thanksgiving would be a good team bonding exercise or whatever, but seriously. I cannot cook. At all.”

“We’ll teach you,” Steve told him. “It’ll be fine.”

It was not fine. Within 5 minutes of Tony entering the kitchen, many things were on fire.

“How, Stark?” groaned Clint as Steve attempted to put out the flames. Tony actually wasn’t sure how; he’d just tried to take a nibble of whatever Nat had been cooking, and before he knew it, something had spontaneously combusted. It was not his fault. Sometimes things just set on fire by themselves.  

“Barton, get out of the kitchen,” ordered Natasha. “I know you’re only here to steal food. And you, Stark--” she spun around, pointing a knife at him—“If I ever catch you doing that again, you’re out, too.”

“Doing what?” Steve asked, glancing at Tony. Steve hadn’t seen Tony trying to taste test, then. “What did he do?”

“I didn’t do anything--”

“He tried to steal some of my Pelmeni,” accused Nat.

“So you set him on fire?”

“I didn’t set him on fire, it was his own fault!”

“Listen, I don’t know what she’s talking about--”

Natasha muttered something in Russian that Tony didn’t understand, but it sounded like a threat. Tony decided that maybe he could wait until supper to taste anything else.

 

“Alright, Tony,” announced Steve. They were standing over all of the ingredients needed to make a good old American apple pie. Tony was not surprised in the least that, out of all the things Cap could have chosen for him to make, this was what he’d decided on. “There’s no way you can mess this up, there’s no fire involved. Or even any sharp objects.”

“If there’s a way, I will find it,” promised Tony.

Making an apple pie wasn’t really that hard, he discovered; mostly it was just following instructions and not listening to Steve when he told him not to add gummy worms.

“Tony, you can’t do that, they’ll melt,” sighed Steve, exasperated.

“So we’ll get melted gummy worm pie, then,” argued Tony. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.”

“Why are you like this,” Bruce muttered, passing through with his vegetable casserole.

“What is that?” inquired Tony, sniffing experimentally. “Is that some sort of vegan hippie bullshit?”

“It is vegan, yes.”

“Are you vegan?”

“No, Tony.”

“Then why would you want to eat something that’s not filled with delicious animal products?” asked Tony, rolling his eyes. “Like cheeeese?”

“Some people actually give a damn about their health,” Bruce pointed out. “Cheese isn’t really that good for you.”

“Tony, stop harassing Bruce about what he chooses to put in his body and come help me with the pie,” prompted Steve. “Here, just lay the crust over it, like this… no, not like that…stop it, you’re making a mess.”

“I can’t help it, Spangles,” sighed Tony, using the opportunity to steal an apple slice from the pie. “What can I say, I’m a walking disaster.”

‘I swear to god, if you do not stop eating the food--”

“You’ll what?” asked Tony, smirking at him. He reached for a can of whipped cream  slowly, watching Cap’s frown deepen.

“Tony…”

Tony, not giving a single fuck, squirted a generous amount of whipped cream directly into his mouth.

“Dammit, Stark, we need that for later,” growled Steve, launching himself at Tony.

Nat walked back in to see them wrestling over the can of whipped cream, the kitchen a mess; Tony had thought it would be hilarious to flick some at Steve, who had thrown a fistful of flour at him in response. The two of them were currently covered in a variety of baking ingredients, the pie forgotten.

“Both of you, out!” she shouted. “Now!”

They ran for their lives, Tony taking the whipped cream with him. 

Having Thanksgiving dinner with the team was good, Tony decided, in spite of the fact that Steve had insisted he change out of his pyjamas. It was the first time the Avengers had actually sat down at the dining room table for a meal together; usually they just ate in the living room while watching TV.

“Shall I say grace?” Steve asked when they were all seated.

“Grace? Are you kidding me?” protested Tony. “Steve, we have a literal Norse god present.”

“I _was_ raised Catholic,” responded Steve as Clint tried to sneak an olive. “Barton, stop it.”

“You don’t even go to church,” argued Tony.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t still pray.” Steve shrugged. “I’ll start, then we’ll go around the table and say things that we’re thankful for. Hold hands.”

No one else seemed to have a problem with it, so Tony allowed it, trying not to focus too hard on the feeling of Steve’s hand clutching his own. Steve recited the Lord’s Prayer, then nudged Tony under the table with his foot to say what he was thankful for.

“I’m thankful for all the booze I’m going to drink once this is over,”  huffed Tony, smirking when he heard Steve sigh exasperatedly beside him. 

“I’m thankful for having a safe place to stay,” continued Bruce.

“I am thankful for the amazing feast set out in front of us,” proclaimed Thor.

“I’m thankful for dogs,” added Clint.

“I’m thankful that Fury liked the picture I sent him of Clint in his Riff Raff costume,” murmured Natasha.

“Nat! How could you--”

“I’m thankful for you guys,” interrupted Steve. “We’ve all become really close over the past few months and that means more to me than I could ever express.”

“Aw, Steve. I always knew you were a sentimental wuss,” teased Tony as they all began eating. "You'd have to be, to appreciate my sorry ass."

The rest of the evening was spent laughing and drinking and devouring as much pie as humanly possible. By the end of it, Tony was exceptionally drunk and feeling as though he was going to explode from the amount of food he’d had.

“Are you drunk?” Steve asked as the others started going off to bed.

“Only a lil bit,” slurred Tony. “Just kidding, I think I’m gonna pass out soon.”

“I want to show you something,” Steve told him. “Come on.”

Tony followed the man up to his floor, where he pulled out a rather beaten up sketchbook.

“You have that look on your face like this is important,” said Tony, raising an eyebrow.

“It is.”

“Steve, I am drunk off my ass,” admitted Tony. “I don’t think I’ll even remember this in the morning.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.” Steve handed him the sketchbook. “Look.”

Tony opened it to find dozens and dozens of pictures—of him. Of the team too, but mostly of him. He stared up at Steve, puzzled.

“I don’t understand--”

“I’m thankful for you,” whispered Steve, edging closer. “I know you think that you’re not good enough, but I promise you that you are. I knew you wouldn’t believe me, so I decided to show you just how much you mean to me.”

“Steve…”

And then Steve was hugging him tightly. Tony, exhausted and far, far too drunk to resist, melted into his touch.

“You should sleep,” admitted Steve. “Do you need help getting to your room?”

“I can make it.”

He did not remember any of it in the morning when he woke up in the elevator. 

Immediately after Thanksgiving, New York City was thrown straight into the month of Christmas.

“It’s not for another 4 weeks!” exclaimed Steve when Tony took him to a shopping mall to look at all the displays. “I don’t understand! And the prices! In the 40’s you could get a Christmas tree for under a dollar.”

“Shush. You’re gonna love what they’ve done with the  centre of the mall,” Tony told him, dragging him to look at the winter wonderland they’d set up there, complete with fake snow and dozens of strings of fairy lights. 

“…wow,” breathed Steve, his eyes wide with awe. “That’s…beautiful.”

“I know,” said Tony smugly, resting his gaze on Steve instead of on the display.

“It’s still too soon to be thinking about Christmas, though,” insisted Steve.

They watched Rent the following Saturday anyway.

“Tony, no,” protested Clint. “Enough with the damn musicals.”

“Of course you picked something that’s going to make me bawl my eyes out,” muttered Bruce. “Still, it’s good to keep in mind how lucky we are during the holidays.”

“Mark is totally Steve,” decided Tony. “Always taking pictures of everything.”

“What’s AIDS?” questioned Steve.  

“Acquired immune deficiency syndrome,” responded Bruce. “You can get it from HIV. You can get HIV from sharing needles, sex--”

“Gay sex, in particular,” interjected Clint, laughing when Steve started to squirm uncomfortably.

“Problem, Rogers?” asked Tony.

Steve shook his head and Tony decided to drop it.

“Stop singing, please,” grumbled Clint. Bruce and Tony ignored them, continuing their duet.

“There’s only now, there’s only here… give in to love…”

“Ugh.” He covered his face with a pillow as they sang obnoxiously louder.

“No day but today...”

“No day but today.”

“That’s the point, you know,” said Bruce at the end of the movie. “Mark was always so obsessed with documenting everything so he could look back on it later, but he never learned to live in the moment.”

Natasha nudged Steve, making eye contact with him pointedly.

“It’s different, with me,” he told her. “I’m not dying.”

“We’re all dying.” 

“Can we talk about Steve’s face during La Vie Boheme when Maureen and Joanne were making out though?” Clint remarked. “He was like ‘oh no, not the gays!’”

“Clint, please understand that I don’t have a problem with it, it’s just shocking to me,” explained Steve, fiddling with the remote nervously. “During the 40’s, homosexuality was a crime, you could get in huge trouble--”

“It’s not like you haven’t had the opportunity to get used to it,” argued Clint. “I mean, look at Stark.”

“…What about Stark?” questioned Steve, his forehead wrinkling in confusion.

“Clint do not--”

“He likes men?” reminded Clint.  “Wait…shit… you did know that, didn’t you?”

“….What?” whispered Steve, turning to Tony, eyes wide.

“Thanks Barton,” muttered Tony. “I was trying to keep Cap from knowing that little bit of information.”

“I didn’t know it was a secret,” protested Clint. “You have a fucking sex tape with a dude on the internet--”

“Cap doesn’t know how to use the internet, now does he?” Tony shot back.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” asked Steve, blue eyes staring into Tony’s own with an uncomfortable intensity.

“I just…I knew how things were in the 40’s and I didn’t want to give you another reason to be disappointed in me,” admitted Tony.

“Anything you wanna say, Rogers?” prompted Natasha, elbowing Steve gently.

“What are you talking about, Nat?” interrupted Clint, glancing between the two of them confusedly. “Steve? What’s she talking about?”

“I…I’m kind of…” Steve started, a blush rising to his face. “Bisexual?”

“Fucking hell, does anyone else wanna come out of the closet tonight?” muttered Bruce. He was typing on his phone, seeming largely bored by the conversation.

“You’re joking,” replied Tony, staring at Steve incredulously. “America’s golden boy? Mr. I-was-raised-Catholic? He likes dick? Jesus Christ, I need a second to process this.”

“You can’t tell anybody.” Steve’s face was burning now. “I’m not… I can’t…The public would be in an uproar about it, there’d be an enormous backlash, and I really don’t think I can handle it right now.”

“No one’s gonna say anything, Steve,” Nat comforted.

“Are you _sure_ you’re not straight?” asked Tony.

“Of course I’m sure I’m not straight,” retorted Steve. “I’ve only known I was interested in fellas since, I dunno, _before the war_. But it was considered a disease, Tony, it was considered a crime, I’m so sorry I didn’t jump out of the closet the second I found out it was supposedly ‘okay’ in this century.”

“Right. Okay.” Tony settled back into his seat, thinking. _We could date now_. Shit, no, he was _not_ going to let his mind go there. Even if Cap did like dudes, the possibility of him liking Tony was ridiculous and probably impossible. They’d only stopped hating each other entirely like a month ago, for god’s sake.

He wouldn’t even think about it, even if Steve was one of the most thoughtful and compassionate people he’d ever met, in addition to being physically perfect. He would not.


	5. Let it Go Steve Jesus

Three weeks before Christmas there was an enormous blizzard. But not a normal blizzard, no, that would have been too easy. There was a mutant with some sort of ice powers adding to the snow that was already falling from the sky naturally, and the Avengers were called out to deal with it.

“Ho, ho, ho!” the mutant, who was dressed in a somewhat horrifying Santa costume, was shouting when they arrived.

“Let it go…let it go…”

“Iron Man, stop singing ‘Let It Go’ over the comms,” ordered Natasha.

“HULK SMASH!” bellowed the Hulk, launching himself at the villain. He was instantly lost in a gust of snow that was directed at him.

“There’s more, team,” reported Cap, as he began punching his way through a gang of what must have been accomplices, as their powers were not as developed as their leader’s. “Hawkeye, where is your location?”

“Fire escape on the building to your left,” replied Clint. “I’ll try to start picking them off for you, but the wind is pretty unpredictable…”

“No kidding,” muttered Natasha. “You’re better off on the ground.”

“I shall turn the snow to rain, that should give us better visibility,” boomed Thor. It did give them better visibility, but then the mutant  began morphing the rain into shards of ice.  

“I’ll take him,” announced Tony. “I’ve got the armour, the rest of you try to avoid getting hit with this shower of fucking ice daggers and keep his sidekicks off my tail.”

Iron Man engaged the mutant and was soon joined by Cap. Steve hated being out in the biting cold like this; it reminded him too much of being frozen.

“Lightning?” asked Thor.

“Not in this weather,” Nat replied, still taking down the lesser mutants even though frost was beginning to settle on her suit. “You’re more likely to hit one of us.”

“Cap, watch out--” Clint called as a large chunk of ice was launched directly at Steve from behind.

Steve spun around, heart racing, remembering the years and years of uneasy sleep spent being unable to get warm, but then Tony was there, blocking the attack. Seeing that the mutant was distracted, Steve took the opportunity to knock him unconscious with his shield.

“You could even say that he’s knocked out _cold_ ,” quipped Clint.  

“Man of Iron, are you alright?” Thor boomed.

And then Tony was falling and Clint was driving an arrow into the neck of one of the lesser scoundrels who had thrown another block of ice at him too fast for him to blast it.

“Dammit, Stark,” Steve gritted out, catching the man before he hit the ground. “Can you hear me?”

“I guess you could say that he’s also out cold,” said Clint, though with a great deal less amusement than last time.

Tony was taken to the hospital along with Nat, who’s arm was hanging limply at her side, clearly broken. Steve went with them. The others were instructed to get warm before they caught hypothermia, particularly Banner, who had woken up naked and confused in a snowdrift, though he seemed largely alright.

Tony remained unconscious for the next day, and the next. Steve fretted endlessly, refusing to leave his bedside, save to retrieve his sketchbook from the tower. He didn’t feel like drawing the man, not like this, with his face pale and sickly. Instead, he flipped through the pages and pages of pictures he had from happier times, hoping there would be more to come.

“He’s going to be alright,” Nat told him after a few days. “He’ll wake up eventually.”

Steve was silent.

“When he does, you should tell him.”

“Tell him what?” questioned Steve, turning to her.

“You know.”

Steve did know. He didn’t think it was a good idea, so he didn’t answer.

The days turned into a week, then two weeks. Steve’s fear began turning into numbness, and he found himself drifting back into the depression that’d consumed him before moving into the tower. Nat forced him to stop lingering over Tony’s bedside, but he didn’t go back home. He wandered around New York City, looking at the lit-up Christmas displays that seemed so dull compared to when Tony had first shown them to him at the start of the month. The snow outside seemed dreary as opposed to festive. People on the subway shouted to him that the world was ending on the winter solstice, but he ignored them. It didn’t matter. His world was already ending.

On the rare occasions that Steve managed to get some sleep, it was filled with nightmares of ice and loneliness and Tony never waking up. When that happened he would always go directly to the hospital, no matter what the time, and against Nat’s orders, and hold Tony’s lifeless hands in his own. Sometimes he would pray, but he wasn’t even sure if he believed in god anymore. Perhaps religion was just another comforting thing that had been left in the past. The good times with Tony had turned into the past now, as well, because that was how time worked. The present was always swept away. The good times always left. Everyone always died, eventually. What point was there even, in trying to be happy in the present moment if it was so fleeting, so impermanent?

It was midnight on the 20th of December, 5 days before Christmas. Steve was in the hospital, clutching Tony’s hand and crying silently, slumped over so that his head was resting on the side of the bed. He felt his fingers twitched and looked up, not daring to hope.

“Steve?” whispered Tony, his eyes cracking open.

“Oh my god, you’re awake,” breathed Steve. “You’re awake, you’re alive--”

“What’s going on?” asked Tony, struggling to sit up.

“You were hit in a fight. Do you remember? You’ve been unconscious for weeks.” The words tumbled out of Steve’s mouth rapidly. “I was so scared, I thought…I thought you weren’t going to wake up.”

“Jesus, Spangles, are you crying?” Tony was looking at him, an unreadable look in his eyes.

“Of course I’m crying, you idiot,” Steve told him, wiping his eyes. “Don’t ever do that again. Please. Never again, Stark.”

“I suppose I’ve gotten enough sleep to satisfy you now?” said Tony, grinning.

“I would punch you if you weren’t in such a fragile state right now,” replied Steve, secretly aching to sweep the man into a hug, but he didn’t.

The doctors decided that Tony was well enough to go home the following day, provided that he didn’t work and the resident Dr. Banner kept an eye on him.

“I’m fine, Jesus Christ,” protested Tony. He stayed out of the lab anyway, wandering around the house with nothing to do, intentionally annoying everyone he came across.

Steve, exhausted, went to bed early that night, expecting to sleep fine now that Tony was back. He was wrong. The nightmares returned, worse than ever, showing him 1,000 ways he could lose the man. He tossed and turned, crying out in his sleep, until he felt hands on his shoulders, shaking him awake.

“Tony,” he gasped, sitting up, still shivering and with his heart racing.

“You alright?” asked Tony, perched on the edge of the bed, holding Steve’s sketchbook. “You left this downstairs, so I thought I’d return it to you… but when I came up here, you were screaming in your sleep…”

“I…I’m okay,” replied Steve, trying to stop hyperventilating. “Did you…look at that?”

Tony nodded.

“I…I promise it’s nothing weird,” stammered Steve. “God, you must think I’m a creep now.”

“I don’t think you’re a creep, Cap,” snorted Tony. “I think you’re sentimental.”

“I showed you, once, when you were drunk.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I know.”

“They make medication for nightmares,” Tony told him, changing the subject. “If you… need that. It doesn’t work on me, but…”

“I’m fine.”

“...Okay. Goodnight, then.” Tony stood up to leave, but Steve grabbed his hand.

“Wait,” insisted Steve. Tony looked at him expectantly. “Will you…stay with me? Please. I mean, if it’s not any trouble for you.”

For a second, Steve was sure he’d decline, but to his surprise, Tony nodded. He shifted over to make room and lifted the blankets up a bit so the man could scramble underneath. When they were both settled, Steve, unable to help himself any longer, wrapped his arms around Tony’s waist and pulled him close, letting his head rest on his chest.

“I’ve got you,” whispered Tony, running his hands through Steve’s hair. He felt his muscles relax, what must have been weeks’ worth of tension ebbing away.

They fell asleep like that, tangled in each other’s arms. For once, they both slept soundly through the night.

Steve awoke the next morning feeling unusually rested and comfortably warm. He stretched, being careful not to disturb the still sleeping genius beside him. Tony had never looked more adorable, Steve decided, with his hair a mess and his mouth slightly open. He took a picture with his phone then burrowed back down into the nest of blankets, glad for the heat they’d built up there.

Tony awoke sometime later, groggily staring up at Steve with a confused expression on his face.

“Morning,” said Steve, raising an eyebrow.

“Ugh, let me go back to sleep,” muttered Tony, shifting closer until he could wrap his arms around him.

“Nah. It’s late, we should get up,” urged Steve gently, in spite of the fact that he was loving the contact.

“Five more minutes,” mumbled Tony, his voice muffled against the pillow.

Steve allowed them five more minutes, if only for the opportunity to cuddle the genius as much as he liked. Eventually, though, he started to feel a bit irresponsible for staying in bed so long.

“Up,” he insisted, tugging at the blankets.

“Nuh,” replied Tony, clinging to them.

“I will drag you out of this bed if you don’t move,” threatened Steve.

“Do it.”

Steve grasped Tony around the ankles and pulled until the genius fell onto the floor.

“Jesus, Cap,” groaned Tony, struggling to his feet. “Fine, I’m up.”

God, he was so beautiful like this. For a second, Steve wanted to kiss him, but he smothered the urge and instead gathered his clothes for the day.

“I’m gonna go shower. Meet you for breakfast and putting up the tree later?” he offered.

“Sounds good.”

Neither of them mentioned the night spent together later on, when the team gathered in the common living room to put up and decorate the Christmas tree, but Tony did stay a bit closer than usual.

Bruce had made cookies and hot chocolate to celebrate Tony being released from the hospital and they ate together huddled on the sofa, admiring the colourful lights strung up everywhere. Literally, everywhere, not just on the tree; Clint and Thor had maybe gone a bit overboard, but no one really minded. It was all going to be okay, Steve decided. Everything was going to be okay.

“Have you told him yet?” Natasha asked on Christmas Eve’s Eve.

“I’m not going to tell him,” Steve told her. “It’s not a good idea, he doesn’t feel the same about me.”

“How are you going to know for sure?” she argued. “Do you really want to let this opportunity go to waste here? Grab it while you have the chance, you literally almost lost him a few weeks ago.”

“Please don’t remind me,” replied Steve.

“Listen, remember that one episode of Doctor Who? Doomsday?” Nat continued. “Ten never got to tell Rose that he loved her. Do you want that to happen to you? Do you want to run out of time?”

“Nat, please…”

“We’re watching the season 4 finale tonight,” she told him. “I hope you’re ready to cry.”

“And Donna doesn’t know it was him, ugh, this hurts me,” Tony complained as the episode was drawing to a close. “Taking away her memories was like, the worst thing they could have done to her.”

“Agreed,” said Steve. “My memories are probably the thing I value the most. They’re incredibly precious to me.”

“Rose, why?” sobbed Clint.

“Literally why would he try to fly the TARDIS when he’s regenerating?” muttered Natasha. “That makes no god damn sense, of course he’s gonna crash.”

“It is a _TV show_ ,” sighed Bruce. “It’s _not real_.”

 

Steve and Tony stayed behind when the other Avengers cleared out of the room that evening, Steve doodling in his sketchbook and Tony reading something on his tablet.  

Steve let his gaze fall upon the other man, taking in the scene. The lighting in the room made it somewhat surreal; the lamps they usually used were off, and the lights from the tree, the lights Thor and Clint had strung across the walls, and the light from Tony’s arc reactor took their place. A rainbow of colours were splashed here and there, with shadows creeping in around the edges.  

“Tony?” began Steve, hesitantly.

“Mm?” hummed Tony, not looking up.

“Can I paint you?”

Tony glanced up at him. “Why would you want to paint me?”

 _Because you’re beautiful_ , Steve wanted to say.

“Because of the lights casting different colours on your skin,” he said instead.

Tony shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

Steve dashed upstairs to get his watercolours, then started by outlining Tony’s shape in pencil, then, when he was satisfied with it, in pen. He ran it over the sharp cheekbones, the dark eyes, the curving angles of his torso. The shadows slunk across the page, filling in and then easing out, hiding along the edges. Steve brushed his fingertips over them, smudging them gently. The lights cast splashes of colour around the room, glowing around Tony’s form. He noticed the way they danced on his skin, blues and reds and yellows…the way the lights from the tree caused his eyelashes to leave tiny shadows on his face, the way the light from the arc reactor was reflected in Tony’s eyes and accented his lips.

“Can I see?” asked Tony when Steve set his brush down at last.

“Sure,” replied Steve, handing the painting to him.

“Holy…” whispered Tony. “Wow, Cap. Jesus. This is amazing, this is beautiful--”

“You’re beautiful,” interrupted Steve before he could stop himself.

Tony leaned in, his eyes staring into Steve’s own intently, and Steve was sure he was going to kiss him. God, those _eyes_ , he would have been so much better painting them from this close up, they were so…so…

“Uhm, am I interrupting something here guys?” asked Clint, who was leaning against the wall, watching them amusedly.

“Jesus, Barton,” snapped Tony, moving away and out of Cap’s personal space. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Not long. Why, did I miss anything interesting?” He smirked at them, raising an eyebrow.

“No, nothing, Clint,” responded Steve, taking the painting from Tony gently and inconspicuously. He held it against his sketchbook to keep Clint from noticing it and stood up. “Well, I’m off to bed. Goodnight.”

 It was snowing gently when Steve woke up the next morning. He hated the cold, but stepped out onto his balcony in his pyjamas to look at it anyway, amused by the way his breath came out in little clouds. After only a few minutes, he decided he regretted his decision and rushed back inside to take a nice warm shower.

“Where’s Tony?” he asked when he went downstairs for breakfast to find everyone else there except him.

“Out,” replied Bruce, nibbling at an apple slice. “I think he gets sad around Christmas Eve, honestly. Not sure why.”

“Oh,” said Steve, trying not to worry about it too much.

He spent the day watching Christmas movies with Thor and occasionally Natasha.

“This ‘Grinch’ reminds me very much of my brother,” Thor told them.

“Why, because he’s a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce?” asked Natasha.

“No, because he is a mischievous “little shit,” as you would call it, but I know he truly possesses a big heart,” replied Thor. “He’s just…emotionally unstable.”

“Thor, Loki is _criminally insane_.”

Tony returned home around dinner time carrying a bundle of mysterious packages that he refused to acknowledge existed when Steve asked about them.

“Alright, fine,” Steve said. “But get your coat on, I’m gonna take you somewhere.”

“Where?” asked Tony, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“To church.”

Tony started to laugh but then paused. “Wait, you’re serious aren’t you? Steve, you know I don’t like that stuff.”

“I know. I don’t want to go so I can force Jesus down your throat, I promise.”

Steve wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Tony mutter something along the lines of  “Good, I kind of wanted something else shoved down my throat.”

“Where are we going, Cap?” asked Tony when they were settled in his car.

“Brooklyn,” replied Steve.  

“Of course.”

The snow had stopped, allowing for easy visibility, and Steve had no problem directing them to an old church. It was called St. Ann & the Holy Trinity, and it had been there since long before the 40’s. It was a beautiful building, and seeing it made Steve feel a bit nostalgic.

“You used to go here, I’m guessing?” Tony asked, staring up at it through the window of the car.

“Yes. I wanted to show it to you, not because of the religion aspect of it, but because of the way it always made me feel,” explained Steve, not bothering to get out just yet. “It was like a bit of peace in this city. And…I always felt a bit safe here, like something was watching over me. Whether that be God, or my own wishful thinking…I love it. And I wanted to share it.”

“Thank you, Steve,” said Tony softly. He paused. “I get sad on Christmas Eve, sometimes.”

“Bruce told me.”

“How the fuck does Bruce know?”

“I dunno. He’s observant, I guess.”

“Well anyway, I get sad, thinking about the concept of family, and things that I’ve lost, and things that I’ve never had,” continued Tony. “Christmas…Christmas was never really a ‘family’ ordeal, it was always a ‘dress nice and fake a smile’ ordeal, at least with my parents, but with Jarvis--the real Jarvis, I mean, I named the AI Jarvis after him--well, he would always do little things that families are supposed to do on Christmas, like hang stockings and read stories…And Christmas Eve just reminds me of how much I miss him.”

“He died?”

“When I was 17. In a car wreck.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve lost worse.”

“That doesn’t lessen the pain,” Steve pointed out. “Let’s go in.”

The services for the night had already ended, but there were still a handful of people scattered in the pews praying. They wandered over to one of the many candle-lit shrines along the walls and Steve lit one.

“Are you lighting it for dead people?” asked Tony in a hushed voice.

Steve shook his head.

They stayed there, resting their gazes on the candles for a while, both of them lost in their own thoughts.

When they exited the church it was snowing again, but not heavily enough for it to be any real problem.

“Walk with me,” suggested Tony.

“Where?”

“No where in particular,” he replied, and they set off down the side walk, stopping every now and then to point out pretty Christmas displays.

“Don’t you hate it, sometimes, that you care?” asked Tony, stopping to buy them coffee at a quaint little coffee shop. “About the past, I mean. It’s over and there’s nothing you can do to change it or get it back, but… you still care.”

“Yeah,” sighed Steve. “Although I guess the alternative to caring would be…well, not to care. To make yourself so bitter that nothing matters to you.”

“Hm,” hummed Tony as they set out walking again.

A short time later, Steve felt Tony’s hand slipping into his own. He smiled softly, glancing over to see Tony smiling back. They stopped to look at some more lights, but Steve was looking more at Tony, watching the way the snowflakes clung to his eyelashes and the way his lips were tinged pink against the cold. His breathe caught in his chest when he realized the street was deserted.

“Tony.”

“Hm?”

“I’m gonna kiss you now, okay?” Steve whispered, and without waiting for a response, kissed him, gently at first, but then more forcefully. He felt Tony nearly lose his balance in shock and put his hands out to steady him, slowly pushing him until his back was pressed against the wall and Steve’s body was pressed on top of him. Steve slipped his tongue into the other man’s mouth and Tony wrapped his arms around his shoulders in response, pulling him even closer.

Eventually Steve stepped back to breathe for a second, and Tony let his head rest back against the wall, obviously flustered.

“That was… that was…” stammered Tony. “Damn.”

“We should get back,” Steve told him, trying not to smile at his friend’s—lover’s?—ruffled appearance. “The team’s probably wondering where we are.”

“They probably think we’re off making out somewhere,” replied Tony, though he turned to walk back to the car. “And that wouldn’t be true at all.”

Steve couldn’t keep his eyes off Tony the entire ride home, his face illuminated by streetlamps as they passed by. It was so _good_ and _peaceful_ and Steve felt so damn _happy_. He snapped a picture of Tony from the passenger’s seat, grinning cheekily when the genius rolled his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes I knowwww. Frozen wasn't out yet. Leave me alone.


	6. Finally some Sexy Times

Tony dragged Steve down to the lab the second they got back to the tower.

“I wanna give you your Christmas present,” he insisted, tugging him along by the hand.

“It’s not Christmas yet,” Steve pointed out, though he let Tony lead him down the stairs.

“Do I care? No.” Tony fumbled with the bundle of packages Steve had caught him with earlier, eventually finding the right one and tossing it at him. “Open it, come on, I wanna see your face.”

Steve obliged, tearing off the wrapping paper carefully.

“A camera?” he asked.

“A Polaroid camera,” corrected Tony. “It prints the pictures out for you, so you don’t have to keep doing it yourself for your little scrapbooking project. The best one that money can buy.”

“Oh, Tony… you shouldn’t have, seriously,” breathed Steve, though his eyes were gleaming with excitement.

Tony, pleased with the reaction he’d gotten, shut him up with a kiss.

“I have something for you, too,” Steve told him as they went back upstairs. “I wasn’t sure what to get you, because obviously you have enough money to buy whatever you want, so I decided to get you something that money can’t buy.”

“A personal strip tease?” guessed Tony as they entered Steve’s room.

“Hilarious, Stark,” muttered Steve.

“I’m joking, I’m joking,” laughed Tony. “I know you’re a pure and innocent virgin.”

“If you don’t shut up I’m not gonna give you your present.”

Tony fell silent and Steve smirked at him.

“Here,” offered Steve, handing him a canvas. Tony was at the centre, depicted in hues of red and gold, shimmering from some sort of metallic paint, and all the colours of a sunset were surrounding him. At the top, written in elegant silver script, was the phrase ‘ _to the future.’_

“Dammit Steve,” whispered Tony, eyes wide. “I…fuck. It’s beautiful."

“You’re beautiful,” Steve told him, kissing him.

"Steve, I don't deserve this," admitted Tony, pulling away. "I don't deserve you, you're too... perfect."

"Nothing and no one is perfect," said Steve. "And that's okay. We don't have to be."

"Good, I'm glad you're not expecting...to fix me, by doing this," stated Tony. "I'm...I'm very fucked up, Rogers. You are, too. And we can't fix each other."

"I know."

“You and Steve are together,” Bruce told him later that night when they were together tinkering in the lab.

“What makes you say that?” murmured Tony, not bothering to look up.

 “I saw you making out earlier when you came home,” Bruce said evenly. “Before you came inside. I also saw you try to put snow down his shirt.”

“Hm. Yes, that might have been something that happened,” admitted Tony.

“You two are very interesting together.” Bruce set down what he was working on and boosted himself up onto the counter. Tony sighed and stopped what he was doing to listen to what his friend had to say.“The futurist and the man from the 40’s. You’ll be good for each other, I think.”

“You mean I’ll help drag him into the present day, make him stop living in the past?” inquired Tony.

“Partially,” answered Bruce. “I also think that maybe he’ll try to stop you from floating off into the future.”

“Bruce, the future is what we’re fighting for--”

“I know the future is what we’re fighting for,” he replied. “But it’s not what we’re _living_ for. I’m gonna harass you with my ‘hippie nonsense’ now. Are you familiar with Nirvana?”

“The band?”

“No,” smiled Bruce. “The Buddhist idea of heaven.”

“You know I don’t believe in that stuff--”

“I know you don’t, I don’t care,” interrupted Bruce. “I just want to know what you think of the idea, from a hypothetical standpoint.”

“I…I can’t imagine heaven,” Tony admitted, twirling a screwdriver in his hands. “I just can’t wrap my brain around a world that doesn’t need fixing, a world that can’t be improved upon. And if there somehow was one…I don’t think I’d like it very much. What would be the purpose of living if you have nothing to work towards?”

“That’s pretty much what I expected you to say,” remarked Bruce. “And you’re not wrong. It’s just a very human way of looking at it. The point of Nirvana is that you don’t want anything, you’re not working toward anything.”

“And that’s supposed to be peaceful?” Tony cut in. “It sounds apathetic to me.”

“Like I said, we have a human way of looking at it.” Bruce shrugged. “We can’t imagine what it’s like to want Nirvana—to not want anything—because we haven’t reached Nirvana yet.”

“That makes no god damn sense, buddy. How are we supposed to reach Nirvana if we don’t even truly want Nirvana?”

“Actually, in order to reach Nirvana, you can’t want to reach Nirvana. I know, it contradicts itself. But that’s not the point,” sighed Bruce. “The point is…maybe life isn’t about becoming. Maybe it’s about being. Just a thought.”

He stood up and walked out the door, leaving Tony alone to consider what he’d said.

Tony didn’t like the idea much; building things, creating things, fighting for the future…that was his life. But Bruce was right. Of course, Bruce was usually fucking right.

Christmas morning was extremely hectic, because _someone_ (okay, it had been Tony) had decided to get Clint and Thor a screaming rubber chicken and a remote controlled airplane, respectively. Of course, the two had decided to combine their gifts to make a screaming flying chicken that would zoom around the house, harassing Steve.

Ah, Steve. He always got the worst of everything; of the three responsible adults in the house, he was the only one who could be properly annoyed, considering the fact that Bruce might hulk out and Natasha would definitely kill anyone that tried getting on her nerves.  

Tony watched him amusedly from his place on the sofa, laughing whenever the screaming flying chicken made the man jump.

“Barton, Thor, stop it,” ordered Steve, glaring at the two giggling idiots who were taking turns with the remote control.

“Aw, they’re just having fun,” defended Tony, pretending to put a comforting hand on Steve’s back when really, he was putting an ice cube down the back of his shirt.

“Dammit, Stark,” growled Steve, squirming, trying to get it out.

Tony, Clint, and Thor howled with laughter at the site, though they immediately stopped when Natasha came in.

“Gather ‘round, boys, I have something to show you,” she proclaimed, settling onto the sofa with her tablet.

“Is it kinky Russian porn?” inquired Tony.

“No, Stark, it’s a bunch of teenagers on the internet pretending to be us,” said Natasha, bringing up YouTube and typing in “Fandoms Assemble! Productions.”

“Pretending to be us?” asked Steve. “Why would they wanna do that?”

_This is Tony Vlogs, with Tony Stark._

“Am I being played by…a girl?” shrieked Tony. “And did Steve just push me on the floor? Fucking rude.”

_This is Steve Vlogs, with Steve, today we’re gonna be talking about everything wrong with Tony Stark. This is, the Fault in Our Stark._

“I can’t wait to see how accurate this is going to be,” said Steve, smirking. “I hope they get your alcoholism and extreme narcissism down.”

Clint and Thor were crying with laughter at the end of the video.

“That’s so fucking accurate,” choked out Clint.

“How did they know all that stuff?” questioned a distressed Tony. “Security breach.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Natasha. “The author just wanted me to promo her YouTube channel. She says everyone should check it out because she’s a very funny person, and the link is at the end of the chapter.”

“Doesn’t seem very funny to me,” muttered Tony.

“The author?” asked Steve. “What are you talking about, Nat?”

“Nothing, Rogers, go back to what you were doing,” Natasha said, winking into the camera. So you’re good for sleeping with me later, right? Natasha glared murderously. Maybe not. Anyway, back to the story.

Director Fury decided that it was the Avengers’ responsibility to host a New Year’s Eve party the following Monday, considering that Tony had enough money to buy as much booze as everyone wanted.

“That’s so not fair,” complained Tony when he heard about it. “Just because I’m a billionaire doesn’t mean that I just feel like throwing away my money.”

“Tony, you bought the entire Care Bears company just so they would make an Iron Man one,” Natasha pointed out.

“That was _important_.”

“Phil’s coming,” Clint announced excitedly.

“Phil? Oh, you mean Agent,” replied Tony. “Wait a second, he’s _dead_. He _died_.”

“Yeah, about that…” Clint said slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “He’s kind of…not.”

“And no one even bothered to inform us of this?” asked Steve, exasperated.

“I told Barton to tell you,” murmured Natasha.

Phil was indeed, very alive, and he was drinking all of Tony’s vodka.

“Being dead just makes you want to drink,” he said, shrugging, when Tony asked about it.

“Being alive and at this party makes me want to drink,” muttered Tony.

“May I have this dance?” asked Steve, offering out his hand to Tony. Phil raised an eyebrow at them.

“Steve, no one else is dancing,” said Tony in a hushed voice, glancing around uneasily. He wasn’t sure what the rest of the team would think of them being together.

“Natasha and Fury are,” Steve pointed out.

“Phil and I are,” added Clint, dragging Phil to his feet.

“Ugh, Barton, I was in the middle of destroying my liver, how dare you interrupt--”

“You can do that later,” declared Clint, waving a hand. He tugged Phil away.

“So, dancing?” asked Tony, allowing Steve to lead him to the dance floor.

“Mm-hm,” replied Steve, wrapping his hands around Tony’s waist.

“Natasha’s over there smirking at us,” Tony told him, placing his hands on the taller man’s shoulders, letting him lead. “Do you think she knows?”

“Definitely. I told her.”

“What?! Why would you do that?”

“Um, because she’s been trying to set us up for months?” responded Steve. “But as far as I know, she’s the only one who does.”

“Bruce figured it out,” admitted Tony. “He saw us kissing on Christmas Eve, before we came inside.”

“Did he also see you trying to  put snow down my shirt?”

“Maybe.”

Steve laughed softly, then paused. “I love you, you know.”

“Steve!”

“What? I do,” Steve insisted, twirling Tony around. “I didn’t want to run out of time to say it.”

“…I love you, too, but dammit, Fury’s staring now. Shit, shit, shit.”

“It’s probably because of my amazing dancing skills.”

“It’s probably because Natasha told him, fuck it.” Tony paused. “Where did you learn to dance anyway?”

“Nat’s been teaching me,” explained Steve. “And she’s certainly better than you. On Halloween you told me just to ‘flail my arms like a drunk person.’ Then you almost fell over.”

“In my defence, I was extremely intoxicated,” Tony told him. “And wearing heels.”

“Everyone shut up!” shouted Clint from across the room, turning the volume on the TV higher. “10…9…8…”

“I’m gonna kiss you.”

“Do _not_ , Steve.”

“7…6…5…”

“Everyone’s gonna find out eventually.”

“Clint will give us hell for it.”

“4…3…2…1…”

“Happy New Year,” whispered Steve, then kissed him. And not just a little peck on the lips, no, that would haven’t been outrageous enough; he full on frenched him in front of everyone. Tony let him, in spite of Maria Hill’s whistle and Clint’s obnoxious commentary.

“Anything you two wanna tell us?” Fury remarked when they pulled apart.

“We’re dating.” Steve grinned cheekily at the people staring at them, wrapping an arm around Tony’s shoulders.

Dating? Were they? The only ‘date’ they’d ever been on was to church, and Tony wasn’t even sure if that counted since they weren’t together at the start of it. Still, Tony thought, smirking at Phil’s dumbfounded face, it was nice. They were _boyfriends_. He pulled Steve closer.

 

“Wanna come make out with me in a secluded corner?” asked Steve after movie night a few weeks later.

“Not especially,” replied Tony. “I would rather we make out in my room, you know, where there’s a bed, and condoms.”

“…That sounds like a bit more than making out,” mumbled Steve, blushing furiously. God, he was so adorable like that. Tony just wanted to kiss those pretty pink lips, Jesus—

“We don’t have to if you don’t want,” said Tony, shrugging. “I know, you’re old fashioned, you probably want to wait till marriage or something.”

Steve’s ears turned red at the word ‘marriage,’ but he didn’t mention it. “I’ve just, I’ve never...fondued.”

“Steve.”

“Mm.”

“I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”

“Well what does it mean, then?”

“It’s dipping sauce,” Tony told him. “Christ, you are hopeless.”

“That’s wildly different from what I’d thought,” admitted Steve.

“Why don’t you come and show me what you thought?” asked Tony, waggling his eyebrows at Steve, who sighed and allowed himself to be dragged to the elevator.

“To the penthouse, J,” ordered Tony, cupping Steve’s jaw and running his thumb over the man’s slightly parted lips.

Steve launched himself forward, kissing Tony fiercely. Tony edged forward slightly, forcing Steve’s back into the side of the elevator, digging his fingers into the man’s sides and smirking when he heard him moan in response. Suddenly the elevator stopped and the doors opened to reveal Bruce.

“You know, I don’t need to go downstairs right now anyway,” decided Bruce, averting his eyes. “You two go ahead.”

Tony could feel the heat from Steve’s blush against his skin and smiled impishly.

“Thanks honey,” Tony called to Bruce as the elevator doors shut and it started moving again.

“Tony, that wasn’t something I wanted Dr. Banner to see--”

“Yes, well, would you rather I stop?” asked Tony, slowing down, trailing kisses along Steve’s neck at a painfully sluggish rate. He felt the other man’s back arch beneath him, and he dropped his mouth lower, pulling aside the collar of his shirt to get at his collar bone.

“The elevator’s stopped,” Steve pointed out, noticeably flustered, hard on visible through his pants.

“Get out then,” murmured Tony, pinching Steve’s ass to get him moving quicker. The man slapped his hands away, shaking his head exasperatedly.

“You love me,” sang Tony, leading him to his bedroom.

“I know,” sighed Steve.

Tony pushed him down onto the bed, ripping off his shirt in the process and trailing kisses along his stomach.

“God, you are beautiful,” he groaned, feeling Steve’s hands tugging at his own shirt, pulling it off.

Then Steve flipped them over so he was on top, hands grasping at Tony’s hips, pressing their bodies together as he kissed him feverishly. Tony’s pants felt too tight now, his cock straining against them, longing for release. He reached for Steve’s pants instead, letting his hands run over the man’s ass as he pulled them down. Now he had a naked super soldier in his bed. Perfect.

“Let me suck your cock,” Steve begged, and Tony let him undo his pants and pop his dick into his mouth. It was wet and hot against Tony’s skin and he could feel himself getting close as Steve sucked harder, his cheeks tinged pink delightfully.

“Yeah, don’t think so,” groaned Tony after a little while, nudging Steve away. “I still have to fuck you with that.”

He pulled the lube out of the bedside table and stuck a finger up Steve’s ass, loving the expression on the man’s face when he did.

“Are you sure you wanna do this?” asked Tony, pausing to look at Steve’s face.

“Do I look like I don’t wanna do this, Stark?” panted Steve. He rutted his hips back and forth gently, trying to get a little bit of friction.

“Point taken,” replied Tony, sliding his dick into Steve’s ass. The look on the other man’s face was priceless. “Heh. I’ve deflowered Captain America.”

“Hilarious,” moaned Steve, hips still twitching. Tony grabbed him around the waist to steady him.

“Beg me,” he whispered, flicking at Steve’s nipple with his tongue.

“I’m not gonna swear--”

“ _Beg. Me_ ,” ordered Tony.

“F--f—fondue me,” begged Steve.

“Close enough.” Tony began fucking him slowly, knowing the soldier was aching for much more than that, if the precum gathering at the head of his penis was anything to go by, but he didn’t care.

“I…golly, right…there,” directed Steve as Tony hit his prostate.

“Like this?” asked Tony, picking up his speed a bit.

“Yes, I…touch me,” pleaded Steve, his cock throbbing between them. “ _Please._ ”

Tony obliged him, working his cock in rhythm to his thrusts, bringing the man to orgasm.

“Tony, I’m gonna…”

Tony kissed him fiercely as he came, feeling the man cry out against his mouth. He allowed himself release soon after. They lay there in a heap, both trying to catch their breath.

“Shower?” asked Tony after a few minutes. Steve nodded.

They collapsed on Tony’s bed afterwards, Steve not seeing the point in going back down to their own floor to sleep.

“I’ve only been pining over you for months,” Steve told him, bringing the blankets up over them as Tony curled up at his side. “It’s only right that I spend as much time as possible with you now.”

“Months? Jesus, really?” asked Tony, draping an arm across Steve’s torso. “Why didn’t you just tell me, then we could have started making out sooner.”

“I kind of thought you hated me,” Steve pointed out. “Jarvis, lights.”  

“Are you telling me I could have eaten Captain America’s ass for Thanksgiving dinner?” Tony asked, his face dimly lit by the arc reactor. It made a good nightlight, really.

“That’s definitely not what I’m telling you, Stark.” Steve rolled his eyes.

“Really, because it sounds like it is.”

“Go to _sleep,_ Tony.”

 

The weeks went on, winter started fading into spring. Every morning Tony woke up beside his favourite person in the world, and it was good.

“Spring is here, Spangles,” he called one morning from the balcony. The sun was just rising over the city. Steve stumbled over to join him, yawning and dragging the blankets from his bed—their bed—with him.

“Remember when we had that Harry Potter marathon?” asked Steve, attempting to wipe the sleep from his eyes. “And we took a break and went outside? This reminds me of that.”

“It’s a good memory, I take it?”

“A great memory, actually.”

“You seem to think about the past a lot,” Tony pointed out. “Ever considered, you know, living in the moment?”

Steve was silent for a second, taking in the view. He sighed, then wrapped his arms around Tony, bringing him closer until they were both cocooned in their bundle of blankets.

“Living in the moment is hard, sometimes. I’m not saying that I don’t want to,” Steve told him. “It’s just that every time I kiss you I think that someday it’ll be over, that someday you’ll die, or I’ll die…that this is going to hurt, eventually.”

“Yes, I suppose it will,” agreed Tony. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters. Things won’t be this good forever.”

“Look…Maybe we have to learn to enjoy the good things without holding on when it changes, because it will,” sighed Tony. “Just as we have to learn to accept the bad things without fearing it will always be that way, because it won’t.”

“That was unusually deep.”

“Yeah, I’ve been hanging around Bruce too much. He’s infected me with his hippie nonsense.”

“You’re right, of course…it’s just hard. After everything.”

“I know. It’s hard for me, too, in the opposite way,” murmured Tony. “You live in the past, I live in the future.”

“We’ll get it.”

“Perhaps.”

“I love you, you know.”

“I love me, too.”

“Tony.”

“Kidding! I love you, too.”

They let themselves stay there for a while, watching the sunrise and holding each other and thinking that maybe, it was alright. It was alright that things wouldn’t be alright, that life is a collection of random and unpredictable moments and sometimes it is very difficult to land on one that makes you feel as if you’re actually living. And sometimes, just as soon as you have it, it’s gone again. You’re out of time. But in _that_ moment, they weren’t; they had managed to exist at just the right moment and find each other and fall in love…they were just in time.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the link to my youtube channel about the avengers (and sometimes other fandoms but mostly marvel): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7SUTbq1ZEpdBbh6LzCTaCw
> 
> Also I was thinking of drawing a page or two from Steve's scrapbook because it seems like a fun art idea, and if anyone else wants to do it too, please send it to me!
> 
> I used several quotes for inspiration in this fic: 
> 
> “Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.” -Kate Atkinson
> 
> "Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing that it will always be this way (which it won't)." -James Baraz
> 
> "The coolest thing about waking up is finding yourself standing in the Now. It's as if you've always been there and just didn't know it. It doesn't matter when you entered the Now, you're just there now and nothing else matters." -Zen Gardner
> 
> "Just let it be. You may as well; it is. Everything moves in and out at its own time. You have no control. You never did; you never will." -The Work of Byron Katie


End file.
